I do not wish to hark back to the appalling blunder which was made this time last year which stopped all issue of taxi licences but I wish to alert the Minister to the serious situation now emerging since the court judgment which followed that blunder.
Everyone has a different interpretation of what the judgment means – the taxis, the hackneys, the corporation, the public and we have heard them all. However, nobody knows what the Minister of State's interpretation is and he has to move now to clarify that. This court case has gone on for a full year and during that time there was adequate opportunity to decide and plan a response, no matter what the outcome of the case. I fully accept that we are now in a legal minefield, with appeal and counter-appeal threatened by all sides, but such threats should not dictate Government policy or allow any deviation from what should be the only agenda: the provision of a service to the public.
The Minister of State simply cannot adopt a "wait and see" attitude, in case there is an appeal or because any new method of licence issue might itself be appealed. There will be appeals but it is not the responsibility of the taxi drivers, the hackneys or the courts to determine or dictate policy. That is the responsibility of the Minister of State and he must now clearly state how he intends to back out of the cul de sac he has created for himself.
The lack of clarity and the lack of certainty is already resulting in the loss of taxis on the streets of Dublin. The second half of the fees for licences issued in 1999 are now due and drivers in some cases are refusing to pay because they believe future licences may well be entirely free. They may be right, but the result is their licences are being withdrawn. In other cases the banks, looking at an entirely uncertain taxi market, are refusing to loan the £7,500 required. I find that somewhat ironic as apparently they had no difficulty loaning £80,000 to allow very ill-advised investment into a taxi market that has been clearly unsustainable for some years. More seriously, the lack of clarity about the Minister of State's intentions is leading to heightened tensions between the hackney and taxi drivers. This tension has already boiled over into violence: as recently as last night a taxi driver was beaten up and had his car damaged to the point of being written off. I fear that this will not be the end of the violence unless the situation is clarified.
On Sunday, taxi drivers from all over the country will have a mass meeting in the National Stadium. The hackney drivers are planning some kind of confrontation for later in the month which I find more than worrying. The very least we can expect to see is city centre street demonstrations which will clog up the city in the run up to Christmas and if I were the Minister I would not wish to visit that kind of disruption on the public. If there are tensions in the industry, it is nothing to the tension and stress being experienced by the taxi-using public who now face another winter and Christmas without additional taxis, if not with fewer than before. What they are feeling is more than road rage or DART rage. It is fury. They are furious that this Government cannot get a handle on the situation.
There are plenty of cars available and thousands of drivers available for them. The only barrier so far has been vested interests, as the Tánaiste said today. If so, why has she sat back for a year and allowed the Taoiseach to delay and pander to those same interests. It is a time for leadership – for the Minister of State to state clearly what he intends to do and that should not be dictated by threats of demonstrations, compensation or threats of litigation. The only agenda must be to sort this industry out once and for all, to put an end to abuses and bring in a system which provides enough taxis to meet the needs of the public, accessible cars of a high standard, driven by drivers who have the necessary qualifications and who can produce tax clearance and RSI forms annually.