Shane Ross advised not to extend Uber beyond taxi drivers

New Minister for Transport Shane Ross has been strongly advised by his officials not to allow car-sharing firm Uber to operate services using ordinary drivers rather than taxi drivers in Ireland.

Briefing documents prepared by civil servants for the new minister show that there is strong official resistance to facilitating the arrival of most Uber services.

Uber , a substitute for taxi and limousine services, runs in cities all over the world. The company, set up in San Francisco in 2009, signs up drivers to an online platform which allows them to accept bookings via an app to carry passengers. Drivers use their own cars, without being licensed taxi or limo drivers.

UberPop, the service which allows ordinary drivers to carry passengers for money, has caused controversy throughout Europe, leading to protests from taxi drivers and has been banned in some countries.

At present, Irish law requires that anyone carrying passengers for money must have a taxi licence, and there is limited Uber service in Dublin run by existing holders of taxi licences.

However, in a series of meetings last year the company sought changes in the law to facilitate an extension of its regular, non-licensed service. But officials in the Department of Transport are strongly opposed to such a development.

In the briefing documents the officials point out that facilitating Uber would require a complete reversal of the legal requirements that vehicles and drivers carrying people for profit must be licensed. It is difficult to see, the documents state, how such a situation “could rationally co-exist with the existing system of regulation for taxis, hackneys and limousines.”

If Uber were facilitated, the officials say, it would be necessary to reconsider whether there could be any system of regulation for any vehicles.

“Any decision to endorse the use of unlicensed drivers and unlicensed vehicles for the transport of passengers in small vehicles for commercial gain would require careful consideration of the above issues,” the officials wrote.