Fascinating to see that one of Tanaiste, Ms Harney's wishes for the new year was not some global, vision-thing, millennial paradigm shift, but the small matter of de-regulating entry to the taxi market in Dublin. There is no need to rake over seasonal tales of taxi-rank blues. There is no need to rehearse all the urban non-myths about long delays, taxis not turning up, advising business visitors to Dublin on Fridays to book their evening taxi to the airport at 11 a.m. or to pay for a taxi to wait all day outside the office. The taxi crisis in Dublin is not just a Christmas phenomenon. It is all-year-round.

It is a public transport problem, another indication that we do not have a first-class public infrastructure, social or physical, to sustain our new wealth. Is there a taxi driver out there who would disagree that we should have a first-class taxi system? Is there one who will argue that we actually do have a first-class system? Is there anyone in the Irish Taxi Drivers' Federation who has demonstrated how we can get one? Will the addition of 820 additional plates on top of 2,374 deliver that first-class system? We, as consumers, as businesses, as voters, have a right to some answers. The answers are most likely to come from the Tanaiste's line of thought, unfortunately characterised as "some party leader's brainwave" by Noel Ahern TD. He went on to state the obvious, namely that he had more users of taxis as constituents than taxi drivers. The implication is that the addition of 820 new taxi licences over the next three years is the best that can be done for consumers. This increase was agreed at the new Government-inspired Taxi Forum by the taxi drivers - so it must be good for the public? No matter that the Taxi Forum (since disbanded) had no direct representation from consumer or business interests on it to agree whatever was proposed.

Both deputies, one would imagine, have read the succinct and incisive analysis of the taxi market in Dublin by Trinity College economists which argued for the de-regulation of the issue of taxi licences and also for the continued regulation of fares. This is no mere "brainwave" thinking or ideological market forces mantra. There is a substantial argument advanced for "re-regulation" of the taxi and hackney market, including issuing new licences free to all existing holders in 1997, peak time pricing, permitting part-time drivers, reducing the cost of a new plate to negligible amounts and tightening the regulation of quality standards. On the other hand, our present path is a continuation of regulatory quotas on the supply of the taxi service. Such quotas can only be a guess at meeting demand, a guess which has been patently wrong for years. Quotas which are too low to meet demand generally lead to miserable queues and public costs with private, concentrated gains. What inspires confidence that the new guess will be any better? The Trinity economists argue that the market can now support more than 4,000 plates, much more than the proposal that we shall have 3,200 taxis by the end of 2002. Why not let the market decide who is right?

Changing the structure of the taxi market is a classic case of potential benefits being spread widely among consumers with costs being borne by a small, concentrated group which is motivated to lobby hard for its status quo. In these circumstances, the person who manages to act for and lead the widely-dispersed large group has been called a "political entrepreneur", a title that the leader of the PDs of all people should revel in. Leadership in such a case amounts to more than making a deal with an industry group. It means breaking down the institutional, administrative and industry barriers to the public good. To achieve a free market for the issue of taxi plates would be a magnificent symbolic achievement, in addition to the benefits it would win for the travelling public. After a few years, it is my view that communications technology will make the present argument over taxi plates seem redundant. The cost and ease of personal mobile communications will make it much easier to call taxis or hackneys, to the point where competition on price from well-branded fleets of taxis will become a realistic proposition. Queuing for a taxi at an ancient rank, or hoping for a random, passing empty cab, will seem as weird as lining up outside an old phone box to press buttons A and B. If not political entrepreneurship, then the force of advancing technology will open up the taxi market finally for the benefit of consumers.

Oliver O'Connor is an investment funds specialist