Richard Boyd Barrett: warns on Uber profiling and calls for NTA action

Thanks, thanks Chair and thanks for indulging me and thanks to David and Eamon who I've been engaging with over the last while and I came out and supported their protest before Christmas, although I'm also friendly to all of the other taxi representative groups who've all been campaigning on behalf of taxi drivers. One thing I think, just on that last point, maybe, I don't know if Dave has a comment, but certainly there's deep, would it be fair to say there's deep concern about the taxi advisory committee that it is not really terribly representative of taxi drivers and there's lots of other interests there that don't actually represent taxi drivers and that has led to many of the taxi representatives groups keeping their distance from it. And what they would like is more direct engagement with the department, with the minister, with the Oireachtas and the people here who can potentially resolve these problems. You might respond to that, but just on the suggestion that there would be an NTA run app, right, I'd just like you to elaborate a little bit on that, but it certainly seems to me, but maybe you could just draw this out, that it's a win, that it's a win, that it's a win for the drivers because there's a proper regulation to ensure you get your income. It's a win for the public because there's proper transparency about prices and there's one way of getting information about availability of taxis and so on. There's a level playing field and it's a win for the state because the money that's now going to companies that are based in the Netherlands or based in Estonia or taking big commissions or adding on technology charges, they're cut out of it and instead there's a reasonable commission could come back to the public. But, you know, is that a fair summation and why it would actually help resolve it? Can you also just, I was talking to Eamon beforehand and he said something really I think we should be alarmed about, but again I'd like you to elaborate, Eamon, is the digital profiling of customers and drivers by Uber, which is shocking to be honest. It shocks me that, and could you just elaborate, I know that's your sort of area of expertise, but maybe you could elaborate a little on that. Yeah, so two studies carried out, were published this last summer, one by Oxford University, that showed that Uber's algorithm, the upfront pricing, what they call in London upfront pricing, it's called fixed pricing here, it's called upfront pricing in New York as well, they analysed millions of trips in collaboration with drivers groups and they showed that Uber are drawing on the personal data of passengers and the personal data of drivers to set fares and that that's increasing the costs for passengers and decreasing the incomes of drivers. And then at the very same time there was a study carried out in Columbia University by Len Sherman and he showed that this is how Uber started to make money. They had never made any profits before 2023 and they did this by figuring out how to maximise the cost, the price that the customer will pay and minimise the fare that the driver will accept. So this is what we're dealing with now, it's not just a matter of, you know, messing around with the national maximum. What we're dealing with now is they're using drivers and the public data in a dynamic fashion to figure out how much they can earn off each individual transaction and Len Sherman's study showed that on the 300, or is it 3 billion jobs that they complete in America, they're averaging $1 extra per trip. That's 3 billion taken out of drivers' incomes over that, that's per year. And that's how they're doing it, they're doing it with data. So we are having conversations in our association looking at different options. We've had multiple meetings with different, I guess, app sales people about purchasing our own app. We haven't, we've asked a question, I think there's a few emails going into the NTA, we haven't got a response from the NTA. And so far as the NTA, Richard, you mentioned something about the NTA, why are we here? Well, you know, I think people are taking their eye off the ball and allow things to happen. And again, I'll go back to Ms. Cocker, it needs to be tightened, it needs to be looked at. Again, Shane, you brought it up, the NTA need to engage with the taxi representative bodies and to fix this mess, to clean it up basically, and again, even in rural Ireland. So yeah, I think ultimately it's just the eye was off the ball, maybe people got a bit laxed, that's fine, it's running itself. You know, it's not, you know, everything needs to be tightened up.