Government’s being called on to introduce ride-hailing services in a bid to meet demands for taxi style services.
It comes in the wake of the results of a Competitions and Consumer Protection Commission survey (full details here) which shows there aren’t enough taxis in the country.
Two thirds of respondents living in rural areas say they couldn’t get one in December of last year alone.
While one in four had problems trying to hail a cab, and gave up.
CCPC Chair, Brian McHugh, believes the market needs to be opened up, saying; “Since 2008 we’ve seen a 40% reduction in the number of taxis in Ireland per head, we’re calling on the Government and on regulators to open up the Irish taxi market so we can see new entrants come in and one of the big issues we haven’t seen in Ireland is those ride hailing services that we see in other countries and in our survey half of Irish consumers say they would like that option to be available”.
He adds; “In other countries what we see is there’s always a regulatory regime so yes, it can be someone’s private car and yes there could be more flexibility but there’s always a regulatory regime in place to make sure that the safety measures are in place, garda vetting for example would always be in place and that’s really important but you then have more flexibility than the Irish regime”.
