I’ve been lucky. Living rurally, I had a taxi driver I could ring at short notice, someone reliable who knew the roads and knew me. That kind of relationship is genuinely valuable, and I don’t want to dismiss it. But I’m also honest enough to admit it’s rare. Most people don’t have that, and in large parts of Ireland, they have nothing close to it.
The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) published research this week that makes for uncomfortable reading if you’re defending the status quo. Two in five people who tried to get a taxi in December 2025 ran into problems. Over a quarter gave up entirely. Outside Dublin, just 28% of people feel there are enough taxis in their area. In Connacht and Ulster, that drops to 21%.
Those numbers are bleak. And if anything, I’d argue they understate the lived experience, because that data covers all days and all times of the month. Anyone who has stood on a Dublin street at midnight on a Saturday knows the reality can feel considerably worse.
The Dublin Picture Is Not as Rosy as It Looks
Dublin skews the national data in a way that flatters it. The majority of Dublin residents feel taxi supply in the capital is adequate. Fine. But spend a weekend night trying to flag one down, particularly in the rain, or listen to the now-familiar excuse that the card machine is broken, or notice the growing number of “Boycott Uber” stickers appearing in rear windows, and you start to wonder what adequate actually means.
Those boycott stickers are telling. Uber’s model promotes fixed fares on routes, and that transparency is, straightforwardly, good for consumers. Sixty percent of respondents in the CCPC survey said they would prefer a fixed fare over a metered one. Drivers pushing back against that are not pushing back against Uber. They are pushing back against what their own passengers want. And it appears the CCPC has had enough.
This Is Bigger Than Getting a Taxi Home
The same week this CCPC research landed, people were gathering outside The Hoxton in Dublin to protest micro issues (a bar with noise complaints) that have macro impacts like steady closure of nightclubs and bars across the city. The two things are connected.
Venues close for many reasons, but one thread running through Dublin’s nightlife decline is simple: people struggle to get into town, and they struggle to get home. Not occasionally. Dependably and affordably. When that becomes unreliable enough, people stop going out. When people stop going out, venues suffer. It is not a complicated chain of cause and effect.
The CCPC framing this as a consumer issue is correct, but it is also a business issue. Improved transport options bring people back into the city. When that happens, it is not just passengers who benefit. More people moving around at night means more fares. Taxi drivers included.
Now, do we also need improved public transport? Yes, of course and it needs to be more affordable too. But modern cities and rural towns and villages all need multiple solutions to get people around.
The Case for Ride-Hailing
The CCPC is calling for regulatory barriers to be removed to allow ride-hailing platforms, such as Uber, Bolt and Lyft, to operate properly in Ireland. These platforms connect passengers with private drivers using their own vehicles, through an app. It is a model that functions in cities and countries across the world, and Ireland has been notably slow to follow.
It is worth being clear-eyed about what ride-hailing involves. It is gig economy work, which brings real questions around worker protections, insurance, and safety standards. Those questions deserve serious answers, not a wave of the hand. The CCPC is not suggesting a free-for-all. Brian McHugh, the Commission’s chair, was explicit: any new entrants should be regulated to maintain high service and safety standards.
Nearly half of taxi users surveyed (49%) said they would like the option of ride-hailing services. Among those who already feel supply is insufficient in their area, that rises to 57%. The demand is there. The need is there. The regulatory will is what has been missing.
A Line Has Been Crossed
I’ll be honest: I did not expect the CCPC to come out with a statement this direct. Ireland tends to move cautiously on these things, and proper ride-hailing has always felt like something that was perpetually “under consideration.” Releases like this do not tend to emerge in isolation. They usually signal that larger conversations are already happening.
The NTA is due to begin a regulatory assessment of dispatch operator licensing later this year. That process now has a very public, evidence-backed shove behind it.
Taxi drivers have legitimate concerns, and those concerns deserve to be heard in whatever consultation follows. But the greater good here is hard to argue with. Ireland’s transport gaps are real, measurable, and affecting people’s lives in ways that go beyond inconvenience. The tide is coming in. Better to be ready for it than to stand in its way.
Has Ride-Hailing Actually Worked Elsewhere?
It is a fair question to ask before Ireland commits to anything. The short answer is yes, broadly, but not without friction, and the friction matters.
In the UK, Uber changed the experience of getting around in ways that went beyond London. Cities that never had a strong cab culture suddenly had a reliable, app-based option at reasonable prices. Fixed upfront fares removed the anxiety of watching a meter tick over on a slow motorway. For late nights, airports, and areas where minicabs were patchy at best, it filled a genuine gap.
The US tells a similar story. Uber and Lyft together are credited with measurably reducing drink-driving rates in cities where they launched. That is not a minor footnote. That is a real-world outcome that is difficult to argue against.
But here is where I would be doing you a disservice if I left it there. The gig economy model has been a persistent and legitimate battleground. In the UK, drivers had to fight all the way to the Supreme Court to be classified as workers rather than independent contractors. Uber lost that case in 2021 and was required to provide minimum wage protections and holiday pay. That was not a small thing, and it took years of legal action to get there.
There is also a congestion argument worth acknowledging. Drivers cruising between jobs add to city traffic rather than replacing private car journeys, and that has been a documented issue in some markets. Pricing is another, given Uber’s surge pricing can become astronomical at the end of gigs or after a large flight lands.
So the net result? A genuine gain for consumers and for transport access, particularly in underserved areas and at unsociable hours. But the benefits landed unevenly, and the costs fell hardest on existing drivers and platform workers until regulation eventually caught up.
That last point is the one Ireland should be paying attention to. The countries that did this well, built the regulatory framework in from the beginning. The ones that did it badly let the platforms move fast and spent years trying to fix the damage afterwards. We have the advantage of going last. It would be a shame not to use it. But given how I’ve seen how we handle electric scooters and the likes, I do worry we don’t tend to learn much from other markets.
