The Dublin taxi market will be deregulated over 10 years with 350 new licences being issued annually, if radical proposals in a consultant's report are passed by the four local authorities.
The report, commissioned by Dublin Corporation, has recommended a radical overhaul of the Dublin taxi market. Hackney-drivers would be permitted to use roof signs, bus lanes and, for callout purposes, mobile phones and radios, the report has proposed.
The four Dublin authorities will vote on Monday on setting up a consultative committee to consider the proposals. It is planned that the committee will have up to 22 members drawn from the taxi and hackney representative groups, the Department of Transport, four county councillors, Bus Eireann and the Dublin Chamber of Commerce.
A second committee, made up of councillors from the four local authorities, will also make recommendations to their authorities. Its chairman, Cllr Stanley Laing, said he believed that measures such as a fare increase could be in place within weeks.
The report by consultants Oscar Faber with Goodbody Economic Consultants and Irish Marketing Surveys also recommends regulating drivers and their vehicles. Taxi and hackney-drivers should be assessed annually "to confirm the licence-holder is a fit and pro per person", it says.
Tachographs - speed-monitoring devices - should also be fitted to taxis and hackneys, the report says, and vehicles should face an annual road-worthiness and emissions test.
The changes to rules governing hackneys will be bitterly opposed by taxi-drivers. Measures to put roof signs on hackneys recently provoked clashes with taxi-drivers. Hackney-drivers are banned from using in-car radios. The proposals will remove most of the distinctions between taxis and hackneys, apart from the ban on hackney-drivers sitting at ranks and responding to street hails.
The fare increase, which was published in the interim report late last year, would mean an increase in the distance charge from 80p to 90p a mile, and in the waiting charge from 10p to 15p a minute. Unsocial hours charges would rise from 40p to £1.20p and a waiting charge would increase from £6 to £9 an hour.
Dublin City Council approved 200 new taxi plates in January, almost a year after approving the issuing of a similar number. However, fewer than 170 of the 400 new licences approved since January 1997 are on the roads.
Mr Laing said this arose from a dispute between the Carriage Office and the Department of Transport and a delay in the supply of taxis. All new taxis must have wheelchair access.
These problems had been solved in the last month, he added, and the remainder of the new taxis should be on the streets by Christmas.
The director of traffic at Dublin Corporation, Mr Owen Keegan, said councillors were determined to solve the problem of taxi supply. The proposals allowed for a long transition period so those drivers who had invested large amounts, some up to £80,000, in a taxi plate would not face instant deregulation, he said.
