I'm not sure they need to soften the test to accommodate immigrants. The majority of new entrants are immigrants. I guess there's a range of possible explanations for that depending on your point of view. Many believe that the streets of Dublin cannot be learned, being knowledge that one can only acquire by being born in Ireland hence they conclude that the immigrants' exam papers aren't marked as stringently as papers submitted by men who are Irish by accident of birth. Others might conclude that (as Joe Herron noted) there are plenty of higher paid jobs available for unskilled workers so the trade simply doesn't appeal to many outside of the immigrant community, who may have skills that aren't recognised in Eire.
Copying London makes no sense, erm. Taxis account for c25% of SPSVs over there, the other 75% being PH (minicabs) use similar vehicles as us.
The standards introduced by Kathleen Doyle are effectively artificial barriers to entry. Quantitative controls based on infrastructural constraints ought to introduced, following the lead taken by DAA.
It is a matter of fact that many African taxi drivers from the Dundalk region were simply handed licenses for Dublin because they claimed Dundalk was a racist town and they couldn't get work there, they never sat the area knowledge portion of the Dublin test.
It is also true that many successful asylum seekers and immigrants from the third world did not have to reach the same standards on the area knowledge test as native Irish people, this is all a matter of record and was widely shared at the time of the occurrences, I can't be arsed to find links right now.
Also, an Indian man was relatively recently caught charging up to €400 per person to get them through the current harder area knowledge test, he was using a communication set up to give the cheaters all the answers while they were in the test room. No doubt he serviced thousands of these recent migrants and helped them cheat their way through the test.
Also, why are non EU students still allowed to circumvent visa rules by driving taxis, I thought they were not going to be allowed to get tax clearance which would stop them driving taxies.
Then there is the issue of blatant illegal taxi drivers, in the past I have found myself in a couple which when considering how rare it is I use a taxi myself it leads me to believe they are far more prevalent than we are lead to believe, I had one who openly admitted they had no spsv licence, he was an Algerian who had absolutely no idea where he was going or how he would get there, didn't know where Fairview was, Didn't know where Connolly station was, Didn't know where the Malahide road.
The Kathleen Doyle test is 100% essential to maintain the integrity of the taxi industry if it is dumbed down then literally overnight there will be tens of thousands of new entrants to the industry which is simply unsustainable, there are limited resources and limited fares, if it is an open free for all then expect it to become a 100% low skilled, terribly paid, newly arrived immigrant job.
The test should be kept hard but there should be a better administration of the test, a model similar to the London knowledge would be better suited whereby it is done in stages and spread out over time.
Entry to non-citizens should be totally prohibited.
Entry to non EU students should be totally prohibited.
