Cormac Devlin
Question:10. Deputy Cormac Devlin asked the Minister for Transport the status of and position regarding the filling of the vacancies on the Taxi Advisory Committee. [32456/21]
View answerThursday, 17 June 2021
Questions (10)
Written answers
I would like to thank the Deputy for the opportunity to clarify the role of the Advisory Committee on Small Public Service Vehicles (SPSVs), sometimes known as the Taxi Advisory Committee.
The Committee was established under the Taxi Regulation Act 2013 to provide both the Minister and the NTA with advice in relation to small public service vehicles and their drivers. Neither the NTA nor the Minister are bound by any advice provided. To ensure that the Committee can provide an informed view on relevant policy and regulatory matters, its composition is prescribed by legislation to ensure that it represents a broad range of interests and, insofar as is practicable, ensures an equitable gender balance between men and women, and equitable representation from both urban and rural areas. There is currently one vacancy on the Committee.
Drivers are an important part of the Committee’s membership and four positions on the Committee are reserved for members who can represent driver interests. All four of these positions are filled by licenced SPSV drivers from across the country and I am satisfied that this ensures the Committee’s advice is informed by the perspective of drivers. The Committee also features dispatch operators, passenger representatives, including members representing the interests of disabled passengers and older passengers, members from the tourist industry, local government and from An Garda Síochána. I am of the view that one of the strengths of the Committee is this broad and diverse representation and I regard the perspective of passengers to be of particular importance when considering SPSV policy issues.
Members of the Committee are appointed by the Minister. Although the legislation prescribes the composition of the Advisory Committee, it does not provide for a specific method for filling vacancies on the Committee and, accordingly, the approach taken over the years has varied. The unpaid nature of positions on the Committee has, at times, posed a challenge in recruiting suitable candidates through open competition. Most of the current membership was appointed following an open competition run by the Public Appointments Service in June 2019, however, this competition failed to attract enough suitable candidates and two vacancies remained unfilled for a period. Three further vacancies arose since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
COVID-19 has had a profound effect on the SPSV sector and I was keen to ensure that drivers were represented on the Committee during this difficult time. In view of difficulties encountered in the previous PAS competition in filling all of the vacancies, and given the additional challenges associated with running a formal competition in the present climate, the NTA was asked to engage with taxi representative groups to identify suitable candidates with due regard to gender balance and the need to balance urban and rural representation.
As some representative groups were reluctant to join the Committee, I decided to leave one vacancy on the Committee for the time being. I respect the prerogative of those representative groups not to be part of the Committee. Nevertheless, I hope that they reconsider their position in time. Although I will meet these representative groups from time to time on identified issues, the Advisory Committee will continue to be the focus of my engagement with the SPSV sector during this pandemic.