{"id":659891,"date":"2026-08-27T21:11:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T21:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/659891\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T21:11:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T21:11:12","slug":"uber-style-fixed-fares-will-remain-part-of-irish-taxi-market-says-nta-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/659891\/","title":{"rendered":"Uber-style fixed fares will remain part of Irish taxi market, says NTA \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The National Transport Authority<\/a> (NTA) says it will not ban the Uber<\/a> fixed-fare model that prompted drivers to stage a series of protests<\/a> in Dublin late last year in new draft regulations.<\/p>\n

At the launch of the NTA\u2019s annual survey of drivers and members of the public on taxi services, the organisation\u2019s director of regulation, Kevin O\u2019Brien, 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will be looking at the rules in relation to those apps, and in some places I think we\u2019ll be tightening things up around consumer protection,\u201d he said. \u201cOur framework is that if you get into a taxi, you should know that there\u2019s a maximum that can be charged but through Uber or through Free Now or through engagement with the taxi driver, it\u2019s fine to be charged less.<\/p>\n

\u201cFixed 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. <\/p>\n

\u201cFundamentally we think discounts for passengers are a good thing, and it\u2019s up to the marketplace \u2013 between taxi drivers and dispatch operators \u2013 to decide the commissions they get or pay to each other and so on. We\u2019re not in that space; it\u2019s up to the market to kind of work out that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Speaking about the issue in November, Minister for Transport Darragh O\u2019Brien<\/a> 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 \u201cby the back door\u201d.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Big reduction in costs could see explosion of robot car servicesOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

On Thursday, however, O\u2019Brien made it clear the NTA had no intention of getting involved in the relationship between dispatch firms such as Uber and drivers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would be concerned if one app company took over the market entirely and was controlling it, but that\u2019s not the case today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alan Cooley, president of the Irish Taxi Drivers Federation and a full-time driver, said the \u201cfixed-fare model is the road to destruction for the Irish taxi industry\u201d and that the \u201cinternational app companies need to be reined in\u201d because of the power they were exerting on the market.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere 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\u2019s busy or raining, but the Government has spend \u20ac71 million supporting the introduction of more wheelchair accessible and electric cars and I don\u2019t think they are going to undermine that by suddenly letting anyone set themselves up as a taxi driver.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The National Transport Authority (NTA) says it will not ban the Uber fixed-fare model that prompted drivers to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,2914,18,19,17,13456,29639],"class_list":["post-659891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-darragh-o-brien","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-national-transport-authority","tag-uber"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117169532743432406","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}