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RIDESHARING SERVICES WHICH supporters claim could spare Irish cities from gridlock are being effectively locked out of the country on the grounds of breaking taxi laws.
Transport officials have recently questioned one of the industry’s newest entrants, a carpooling app backed by entrepreneur and Dragon’s Den investor Sean O’Sullivan, on how it fits within rules that have already seen similar operators abandon the market.
But Cork-based startup Carma Carpooling claims it is only promoting the kind of ridesharing setups neighbours and colleagues have been doing for decades.
The startup, which evolved about 18 months ago out of O’Sullivan’s earlier venture Avego, is the latest to catch the eye of the National Transport Authority (NTA).
While Carma has been focussing all of its attention on the US – and primarily San Francisco – in its early stage, it is available for download and use anywhere, and has a small “cluster” of users in Cork.
Co-founder Emmett Murphy told TheJournal.ie the company had requested a meeting with NTA after receiving a letter from the government agency.
We are about driving with their neighbours and their colleagues and sharing the costs as they go to work,” he said.
Carma’s app allows people to book carpooling trips in return for a per-mile charge based on the break-even cost to US drivers. It keeps 15% of the revenue for its own operations.
No commercial rides
Last year the NTA issued a warning to German newcomer WunderCar that it would be breaking taxi licensing laws if it went ahead with plans to launch its ridesharing services in Dublin.
The company, which was already running in several European cities, bases its services on non-obligatory tipping of drivers for journeys booked through its app, but dropped its move into Ireland after the warning.
WunderCar founder Gunnar Froh said the company’s aim was to make travelling in a city easy by allowing people to instantly share transport but it didn’t “facilitate commercial rides”.
“In a few years from now, we believe that sharing a ride in the city will be just as common as it is today to take the bus,” he said.
Based on our experience, we think that innovative forms of transportation have to be piloted in other cities than Dublin, though.”
A juggernaut stopped
Recent figures from the European Commission showed Irish people favoured cars more than anyone else in the EU except for residents of Cyprus.
Ridesharing advocates argue their services help take cars off the road and clear congestion by making more efficient use of the available resources, as well as saving users money.
Meanwhile, global juggernaut Uber has also been forced to shelve the ridesharing offerings that have helped make it the world’s second most-valuable startup for its Irish operations.
Here it effectively operates as a taxi- and hire-car booking service only, absent its more-controversial features of being able to also book private cars which were not officially licensed as taxis.
Those budget options have helped Uber broker over one million rides worldwide per day, although it has also led to city bans and protests from taxi drivers complaining the startup puts them out of business.
There have also been safety concerns raised about putting passengers into cars with drivers who haven’t gone through the same vetting processes as professionals, although the companies involved have been careful to try and put those fears to bed.
In Ireland, companies found to be running illegal taxi services can be fined €50,000 while individual drivers can also be sanctioned under 2013 laws which ban people taking paying customers in their cars without the proper license.
A spokeswoman for the National Transport Authority (NTA) said it was only legal to offer carpooling or ridesharing services when there was no money changing hands.
A different mission
However Murphy said he looked at companies like Uber and its competitor Lyft as “operating in a very different space” and Carma didn’t facilitate any trips for gain.
“The big difference is their drivers are making a profit in the same way as taxi companies are. Our drivers pretty much never make a profit.
Our mission, which is very different, is to fight traffic congestion - we would love to see more people try to crack this problem.” tjb
This month, as part of TheJournal.ie’s ongoing startup and small and medium enterprise (SME) focus, we are looking at peer-to-peer services and the sharing economy.
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France. Always have been. Always will be.
@Vonvonic: seriously?
@Thomas O’ Donnell: I would agree with Vonvonic. The alliance goes back to Norman-Ireland. A lot of the Normans that settled in Ireland would have classed themselves as more French than English.
@Vonvonic: I would agree you only have to look at the Wolfe Tone connection
@Patrick Corr: it was at Fontenoy that the cry was heard, while charging at the British in the decisive rout by the Irish Brigade, Remember Limerick and Saxon Perfidy.
@Vonvonic: Bien sûr mon ami!
It has to be said that Irelands department of foreign affairs have done a great job over the past few years with the UN Security Council, the observer statuses, etc., but the reality is Ireland has lost our biggest ally in the EU now that the UK has gone and there are a few countries who have their eyes on several of Irelands laws and policies that they will target and not for Irelands benefit. The commenters on this site are 90% anti UK, and definitely anti everything the government does, so it’s not the best comment section to get a decent POV but it would be good to see if Irish people, in general, are aware of where we stand in the EU today
@Local Ore: The article addresses this, we build alliances on a policy basis rather than being wedded to any particular one on all things. This is a highly beneficial approach that creates political capital. The divergence of Ireland and the UK within the EU has been going on so long that when it they did leave, it impacted us far less than many expected. We are well able to plough our own furrow and protect our own interests, while keeping a pragmatic and flexible position in a fast changing world. We are also now the only EU member State with english as a first language. If we weren’t doing so well already, I’d go so far as to say that the UK’s act of self-isolation will be the making of Ireland.
@Eoin Roche: Ireland’s economic success is completely due to FDI. It was 288% of GDP in 2019. The UK accounts for far more of FDI than any EU country. In terms of exports, The US and The UK account for 41% of Irelands exports, France accounts for 4%… I mention this because France competes with Ireland far, far more than people think and they intend to target Irelands FDI, I have members of my team supporting French Public Sector bodies right now reviewing EU policies on how to target the €1Trn FDI Ireland gets. Think of the size of France, we import about €13bn from them, they import about €5bn from us. France and Germany plan to strengthen their ties and “leadership” (control) of the EU over the coming years, this isn’t to support “the making of Ireland”, it’s to grow themselves
@Eoin Roche: Dublin is now an outlier in an EU where reliance on foreign multinationals will no longer be ignored. These companies now account for 32 percent of all jobs in Ireland and 49 percent of employment taxes. 75 percent of recent Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into Ireland either comes from the U.S. (58 percent) or the U.K. (17 percent). By contrast, just 5 percent comes from Germany. Dublins Economic Model is the talking point of EU policymakers, as I mentioned, and we are already seeing it – harmonised corporation tax. Next will be FDI policy and they are already drawing it up to try to “harmonise” it toward other EU countries.
@Eoin Roche: Correction: Malta has English as a first language.
@Nick Caffrey: Correction: Maltese is the 1st language in Malta, English is 2nd and also an official language
@Local Ore: You are failing to differentiate between US FDI and UK FDI. The US is by far more important than the UK to us, no comparison. Why do you conflate two wildly different countries/economies?
@Leo Sharkey: I’m not conflating them in any way, I’m pointing out that Irelands largest investment, and trade, comes from outside the EU and was heavily protected by the UK supporting Ireland on policy and vice-versa. I’ve seen people on this site say France and Germany are major allies/supporters of Ireland and I wonder if it’s total lack of knowledge, deliberate ignorance or just the anti-UK sentiment of most of the commenters. Only in Ireland do people think Ireland is better off in the EU without the UK… it goes against all logic and facts. The EU is a body of consultation and common action between states, underpinned by legal and institutional arrangements. These arrangements are evolving in response to needs as they arise and France and Germany’s needs to do not align to Irelands.
France and Germany have supported us throughout the whole Brexit process and NI protocol . If they wavered in their support for us, the British would sense an opportunity and end up causing trouble in Northern Ireland.
We are more aligned with our Nordic blood brothers and france than any of the other countries in europe.
It is worth recalling that the old British policy of DIVIDE AND CONQUER failed when they attempted to disunite the EU approach to recent events.
It’s a right tough one, not Portugal or Spain because of the amount that go there on holiday, they know what we are like when let out. Not the French as they’ve always tried to help us but end up making a balls out of it and then think it’s our fault. Not Poland, they know what we’re like too from half of them being here at one stage. It wont be the Italians either as the blue shirts have given Mussolini’s black shirts a bad name! I’ll run out of characters soon so I’m sure others can fill in the blanks, who haven’t we pissed off?
@This time its personable!: Did you read the article? The Scandinavian and Benelux countries are our natural allies in Europe.
@JustMeHere: I did boy, I didn’t include them there I was pointing out the additional reasons why the others aren’t too for caring about us!
I would argue that Angela Merkel and Germany have been our quiet allies for 20 years, France, the Baltic, and Benelux states, but generally speaking we have good relationships with all our EU colleagues.
@Leo Sharkey: I literally work in this area of the public sector and can tell by this comment that you most definitely do not. France has been attacking Irelands tax and FDI for my entire career, the “Dublin Economy” drives them mad in Brussels. The Netherlands directly competes, and wins, in financial services with Ireland. Ireland has a deregulated, highly flexible global economy that lacks the comprehensive social protections of continental counterparts such as the Netherlands or Denmark, the model stands in stark contrast to the centralism unleashed from the Elysée. The countries you mention are highly focused on corporate and digital taxation, data protection and the further centralization of the eurozone – all massively damaging and contrasting to the Irish model.
Henry 8th’s break was the same mentality as Brexit. A difference is that Boris will not be confiscating assets of Europeans and calling it a reformation.
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