Phil Hogan
Question:102 Mr. Hogan asked the Minister for Transport the amount paid to taxi plate owners arising from deregulation; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [32643/04]
View answerWednesday, 8 December 2004
Questions (102)
Written answers
It has been clearly stated since taxi liberalisation that, based on legal precedent, there can be no duty on the State to compensate taxi licence holders as regards open market licence values that may have existed prior to liberalisation.
However, an independent three person panel, the "taxi hardship panel", was established in February 2002 to report in general terms on the nature and extent of extreme personal financial hardship that may have been experienced by individual taxi licence holders arising from loss of income as a direct result of the liberalisation of the taxi licensing regime, including an estimate of the numbers of individual licence holders involved, the likely financial implications and the recommended criteria for assessment of extreme personal financial hardship under any subsequent proposed response by Government.
The report recommended the establishment of a scheme to provide payments to individual taxi licence holders who fall into one of six categories that the panel assessed as having suffered extreme personal financial hardship arising from taxi liberalisation. The payments recommended by the panel range from €3,000 to €15,000 depending on the category of hardship involved. The Government approved the implementation on a phased basis of these recommendations. The payments in question do not represent compensation but rather compassionate payments in respect of extreme personal financial hardship.
Area Development Management Limited, ADM, was engaged to administer the taxi hardship payments scheme which is implementing the recommendations of the taxi hardship panel report. Hardship payments totalling €13,983,000 have been made to 1,192 qualifying applicants under the taxi hardship payments scheme to date. I understand that a meeting of the ADM board is due to take place today following which it is expected that further hardship payments will be made to qualifying applicants.