Thousands of taxi drivers this morning began protests outside the constituency offices of Government ministers as part of campaign to secure compensation following deregulation.
Mr Vincent Kearns, vice-president of the National Taxi Drivers Union, joined those who placed signs outside the Taoiseach Mr Ahern’s constituency clinic in St Luke’s, Drumcondra, at 7 a.m.
Mr Kearns said taxi drivers would make this "an election issue" with protests staged during clinic opening hours every day from now until polling day.
Over 3,300 NTDU members will participate in the rolling protests, Mr Kearns said.
"The Taoiseach has failed to address the two central issues put to him by the National Executive of the NTDU: the appointment of a taxi regulator and a restructuring fund," he said.
The NTDU claims opposition parties such as Fine Gael have been "more creative" in terms of the restructuring package -with a substantial proportion of the funding generated by taxi drivers. "A figure of €200 million has been mentioned and a large part of that could come from the industry," said Mr Kearns.
The Government is denying the property rights of drivers who had held a pre-deregulation licences despite charging capital gains and inheritance tax on those plates, he said.
Protests are ongoing outside six ministers’ constituency clinics, including those of Minister for Justice, Mr O’Donoghue; Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy; Minister of State, Mr Molloy; and the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Tánaiste Ms Harney.
A protest outside the offices of Minister for Public Enterprise, Mrs O’Rourke, was suspended today as her constituency clinic is within her home.
The Taoiseach’s office has not yet issued a statement on the protests.