Taxi policy re-think essential, says report

THE Government should stop issuing new taxi plates immediately and rethink its entire taxi policy, the Oireachtas Transport Committee heard yesterday.

The call for a deregulation turnaround came as a new European Parliament report heavily criticised the Government’s Taxi Hardship Panel and the manner in which it was doing its work.

Despite agreeing a figure of 15m to compensate drivers who bought plates at a high cost before deregulation, the Government’s hardship panel has not yet allocated a single cent to families in financial difficulty two and a half years after deregulation.