Hanafin highlights plight of disabled in hailing taxis

Taxi-drivers should be required to attend disability awareness training, the Government Chief Whip, Ms Mary Hanafin, told the Dáil.

"The completion of such a course should be a condition of granting a licence and the renewal of a licence in the case of existing drivers," she said.

Ms Hanafin claimed many wheelchair-users found that accessible taxis did not stop for them on the streets, despite the fact that a light was on indicating they were available for hire.

"They feel that drivers do not want the hassle of dealing with people in wheelchairs," she added. "This problem is so endemic that many do not even try to hail cabs on the street to avoid embarrassment of constant refusal. A lot of this problem is probably caused by the fact that drivers require no training in how to deal with people with disabilities at present."

Ms Hanafin said the Taxi Regulation Bill 2003 would provide a "new independent and transparent regulatory framework" for the industry. She added that the need to provide incentives for people with disabilities to use the taxi service, and for taxis to provide a service to them, should be closely examined by the new commission.

In the UK, she said, a taxi-card scheme operated to subsidise the travel of people with disabilities, while, in Chicago, a voucher-based scheme provided both a subsidy to disabled drivers and a bonus payment for catering for this part of the market.

The feasibility of introducing a scheme similar to the one in Chicago should be closely examined to complement the phased introduction of wheelchair-accessible bus and rail services currently under way.

Mr Finian McGrath (Independent, Dublin North Central) said that if a taxi-driver was found guilty of ripping off people on a regular basis, he or she should be "drummed" out of the service. "I get too many complaints about a minority of taxi- drivers ripping people off, particularly visitors to our country," he added. "I emphasise that it is a minority."

Mr Sean Ryan (Labour, Dublin North) claimed that many Fianna Fáil deputies and senators had misled taxi-drivers. "They gave the clear impression at meetings of the then Dublin Corporation that they would protect the taxi industry and avoid deregulation," he added. "Many drivers believed the deputies' promises. Many families were caught by surprise and suffered extreme hardship when the Government decided to proceed with deregulation."

Mr Gay Mitchell (FG, Dublin South Central) said the primary concern should be about the safety of passengers. "This is a concern shared by the 99.9 per cent of taxi drivers who have never been involved in crime," Mr Mitchell said. "They, too, are concerned about the sort of people to whom some taxi licences have been given in recent times."

He was also concerned, he said, about the safety of taxi- drivers. "From what they tell me, many of them are fearful of working at night," he added. "It is not that they do not want to work at night. In the past, many of them have done so, but because of some sort of crazy change in atmosphere that has taken place in Dublin city, many taxi-drivers are now afraid to work at night."

Mr Mitchell said that while he hoped he was not stepping into the area of sexual discrimination, "taxi-drivers have told me that women who get into their taxis at two or three o'clock in the morning are often incoherent and incapable of saying where they want to go." Taxi-drivers, he said, were fearful of the potential consequences if they put such women back out on the street.

"A taxi-driver recently complained to me about a woman getting into his taxi while the man accompanying her stood urinating on the street and asked the driver to wait for him," Mr Mitchell said. "This sort of thing is going on in the city. Taxi- drivers regularly run the risk of picking up fares who threaten them with syringes, and they suffer yob behaviour by males, even in the company of their partners."

The House agreed the second stage of the Bill.