By and large, Dublin taxidrivers are a chatty, friendly lot. The contempt they showed yesterday for fellow road-users is born out of the frustration of knowing that the taxi market in the city has become economically dysfunctional. And the drivers don't quite know how they let that happen.
Like many disputes, the row is really about something other than the declared casus belli. The taxidrivers complain that their licencefee renewal charge has been arbitrarily increased from £100 to £450 by the four local authorities in Dublin. At the beginning of the 1990s the equivalent fee was £7. The drivers clearly have a case: if the local authorities increase the charge by 450 per cent when inflation is running below 2 per cent, they must see the taxi-drivers as (a) an easy mark, or (b) chronically under-paying. But it is not the real issue. Closer to the heart of it is the issuing of 200 new licences for wheelchair-accessible taxis at a cost of £15,000. The wheelchair-accessible aspect is somewhat of a red herring. For the holders of existing plates it is the issuing of new ones. Plates are now changing hands for about £80,000. This is a considerable investment for the owners and one whose value they are anxious to protect.
To a large extent, it explains the reckless activity on Dublin's streets yesterday and the willingness of the taxi-drivers, against their better judgment, to incur the anger of the people and so finally to invite political action to end what is in effect a monopoly, with the cost of entry to the business grotesquely high.
How did it get to this point? One cause is the job-shedding in the city's traditional industry in the 1970s, 1980s and up to the middle 1990s. Workers in firms like Guinness and Irish Distillers were offered generous redundancy packages to retire early. Some had the option to continue in their old jobs, but as contracted employees. Others chose to use their lump sum to buy a taxi plate. Never again would they be made redundant. The taxi parked outside their home was their job for life. The work was difficult and the hours were long, but nobody was ever again going to hand them a P45.
And so demand drove up the price of the taxi plate. Business people began to take note. A taxi plate was appreciating in value almost like a Dublin pub, and for much the same reason: the market is tightly regulated. Legitimate business people such as the bookmaker Terry Rogers began to invest in taxi plates, realising they were a sounder investment than a government gilt, rock-solid but with a considerably higher return. Gardai believe that at least one Dublin criminal gang arrived at the same conclusion and is the beneficial owner of an unknown number of plates. The distortion of the market has been exacerbated by the uniquely Irish social phenomenon of throwing people out of pubs precisely at the hour when public transport ceases. This creates an enormous demand for taxis which is entirely artificial. Any business which doubles in size to meet a two or three-hour demand would not stay long in business. The same case in the taxi-driver's favour can be made for calls that more taxis should be put on the road over Christmas.
It is clear that the Dublin taxidriver's life is full of stress. They have the hassle of the traffic by day and the hassle of drunks - both in the car and other cars - by night. They routinely work 12-hour days. "I have no life," one of them told RTE Radio yesterday. Most of all, though, they are desperate to protect an investment which has taken on an artificial worth for reasons beyond their control. The solution lies with the political forces which have - for reasons unknown - ignored the development of this problem. A way must be found to protect the citizen from the mayhem on Dublin's streets yesterday, while bringing the cost of a taxi plate into some kind of economic equilibrium.
