Richard Boyd Barrett Questions Uber/Bolt Ties, Backs NTA App

Thank you Chair for responding to the taxi drivers and facilitating this important discussion and to thank the contributors and I should declare my bias in that I know Dave and I know Jim and Alan Brennan for many years. Alan, by reputation, not as well personally, but I'm unapologetically on the side of the drivers who I believe are fighting in the best interest of taxi drivers but also ultimately the best interest of the consumer in terms of the safety of passengers and to prevent profiteering by the app companies. But my first question is actually to Pat and to Adrian. You see, your desire for national strategy is agreed by the drivers. The concern about lack of taxi drivers in rural Ireland is accepted, although I think urban settings are very different, by the way. I do not understand why you've linked up with Uber and Bolt and I really would like to understand that because can you honestly tell me what Uber and Bolt bring that is good to this scenario rather than direct engagement with the people sitting in this room who are open to addressing the problems you have? Uber is a company based in California. Uber is a company based in California that made 9 billion in profits last year. Bolt is a company based in Estonia that I think has revenues of 2 billion euro. They don't work through the Irish tax system. They don't provide drivers. They don't train drivers. They don't invest. They do absolutely nothing except make profit at the expense of the driver and the consumer with technology and priority charges. So why have you aligned with them? So why have you aligned with them? That's my question to you. And why would you not endorse the call of the taxi drivers here for a not-for-profit app run by the NTA, which would surely be a win-win for the drivers and for the passenger? Because it would mean that it would mean that the drivers get a proper livelihood, but that there is regulation preventing the profiteering that we're getting with these priority charges. For the drivers, I'd just like to elaborate a little bit on what we know internationally about what Uber and their likes, particularly Uber, but some of the others, what's down the road for the passenger and what has already started to happen with surge pricing. But maybe you could talk, I mean, I've heard anecdotal examples of Uber and other jurisdictions where you're talking about, like, they end up taking 50%, this kind of, of the fare, the drivers, you know, what the driver gets is driven down and you get enormous surge pricing. And I've also seen examples of surge pricing already starting where things like priority charges are 9 and 10 euro, technology charges are 1 for 22 euro. And you just think, you know, like, and doesn't this, and maybe you could elaborate, Dave was explaining this earlier on, that it's kind of a movable fees to priority charge. So, in other words, you could have two people waiting for a taxi, one person could be waiting longer than the other, but if one person says, well, I'll pay 20 quid in a priority thing, and the other person can only afford five in a priority thing, the person with more money gets the taxi, regardless how long, now, I mean, surely we don't want that. Surely we don't want that, but maybe you could elaborate a little bit on that. And could you say something, could the driver say something about ranks? Because if you get a taxi at a rank, which are being reduced all the time, but actually it's the best deal, if there's lots of ranks, because the driver gets his fare, but it's a regulated fare, but you don't have these companies taking the commission out of it. So if we had more ranks, we'd have availability of taxis, but not the profiteering. I'll start, Deputy, thanks for the question. I'm not here to represent Uber, Bolt, or Free Now. The coalition was established nearly two years ago to try and look at and raise the issue around our customers finding it hard to get taxis late at night for the late night economy that pubs, restaurants, are dependent on. And in terms of, you'll have an opportunity in two weeks, I think, that Free Now, Bolt and Uber will be hidden here before the committee, so you can ask them their questions about their operations. Our main thrust here, our main issue is that our customers late at some times of the year cannot get home. And when we have done Red Sea polling of our customers, female customers want a door-to-door service. They don't particularly want to take a bus home, get off at a bus stop and have them to walk 500 metres or 700 metres. So, you know, that's our customers, that's what we're, they were raised with us, so that's why we're highlighting that there is a short sheet of taxis at certain times of the day, certain times of the year. And in certain parts of the country, there's no taxi whatsoever. And that's why we're here, the committee, to raise those issues. Thanks very much. As regarding the taxi ranks, like, we've noticed over the last 20 years a reduction, particularly on main footfall areas. One of the largest ranks in Dublin was removed off O'Connell Street, Stephen's Green, now the College Green rank is probably the busiest rank, and that's gone probably within the next year or two. So it's making it impossible almost for customers to walk the couple of yards from bars, restaurants, shops, and get a taxis. A minimum, it is going to be €4.50 cheaper to walk to a taxis stand, a minimum. So I would, like, I would encourage people to do it, particularly when they're in around the city centre and it's hard to get into, you know, closed off areas. Taxis stands, we need more taxis stands in the city, not less. Whether they be smaller taxis stands, but we need more of them. Just in the last 20 seconds, could maybe you explain why a not-for-profit NTA run app would be win-win for the driver and the consumer? Well, it means every driver will be on it. It would have to be that every driver registered when you pay your SGS fee or whatever. So every driver, you'd have a lot more taxis on it, because despite the fact that they're supposed to be great for the taxi driver, the majority of taxi drivers do not participate in Bolt or Freenow. Thank you. Thank you.