Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy has called on the Minister for Transport to review the funding scheme for Wheelchair Accessible Taxis so as to ensure that every area has a sufficient allocation of accessible vehicles to meet demand.
Research undertaken by Deputy Murphy shows that allocation of wheelchair accessible taxis across Counties is very unequal with some counties having significantly less accessible taxis than others.
Deputy Murphy said:
“I have broken down the information provided to me in a number of PQs from the Department of Transport and the National Transport Authority and matched that against census population data and the results show that some counties simply do not have sufficient accessible taxis to match the population. Tipperary, for example, has only one accessible taxi for every 12,342 people whereas Dublin has 1 taxi for every 1,996 people.”
“There is little point in continuing to allocate grants using a system that continues to improve only certain counties while other counties fall further behind. While of course the primary goal at all times must be to ensure a constant increase in the overall number of accessible taxis available, that increase must happen in a way which ensures that there is a minimum acceptable number of accessible vehicles for each county ”
23rd January 2017
ENDS