The National Transport Authority (NTA) says it will not ban the Uber fixed-fare model that prompted drivers to stage a series of protests in Dublin late last year in new draft regulations.
At the launch of the NTA’s annual survey of drivers and members of the public on taxi services, the organisation’s director of regulation, Kevin O’Brien, said the current system, which provided for a maximum permitted metered fare but allowed for this to be discounted to a fixed amount offered when the trip was being booked, provided added value to customers who booked through apps.
“We will be looking at the rules in relation to those apps, and in some places I think we’ll be tightening things up around consumer protection,” he said. “Our framework is that if you get into a taxi, you should know that there’s a maximum that can be charged but through Uber or through Free Now or through engagement with the taxi driver, it’s fine to be charged less.
“Fixed fares have always been an element of the marketplace down the years. Now, I suppose, Uber have started doing it on a quite significant scale, but we would have been public at the time that that was okay under the regulatory system.
“Fundamentally we think discounts for passengers are a good thing, and it’s up to the marketplace – between taxi drivers and dispatch operators – to decide the commissions they get or pay to each other and so on. We’re not in that space; it’s up to the market to kind of work out that.”
The decision not to change the regulations is a blow to taxi representative groups, which had argued Uber, which introduced fixed-fare offerings at the start of November, was exploiting a loophole in the rules that needed to be closed.
Speaking about the issue in November, Minister for Transport Darragh O’Brien said he had written to the NTA asking it to look at the regulations around fixed fares. The following month he said Uber would not be allowed to introduce a new price model “by the back door”.
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On Thursday, however, O’Brien made it clear the NTA had no intention of getting involved in the relationship between dispatch firms such as Uber and drivers.
“We would be concerned if one app company took over the market entirely and was controlling it, but that’s not the case today.”
Alan Cooley, president of the Irish Taxi Drivers Federation and a full-time driver, said the “fixed-fare model is the road to destruction for the Irish taxi industry” and that the “international app companies need to be reined in” because of the power they were exerting on the market.
“But it’s not just about the companies. The drivers need to refuse to accept it. They need to turn off those apps and sign up to Irish ones like Tap-a-taxi, Trip, Lynk, or Satellite in Cork, which all operate far more driver-friendly models.”
He said that while the continuation of the fixed-fare model had the potential to drive people out of the business, he did not believe the new regulations would pave the way private car owners to sign up to the apps in the way they can in many countries.
“There are a lot of issues we would like to see addressed … The commissions charged by the international apps, the ways in which they are trying to introduce surge pricing so people pay more when it’s busy or raining, but the Government has spend €71 million supporting the introduction of more wheelchair accessible and electric cars and I don’t think they are going to undermine that by suddenly letting anyone set themselves up as a taxi driver.”