That dogged champion of the taxi-drivers' cause, Mr Eamonn Murphy, went on RTE radio's Tonight with Vincent Browne the week before last to defend what many consider the indefensible one more time.
He restated the drivers' unambiguous opposition to deregulation of their industry, and told listeners that long taxi queues were not the fault of taxi-drivers, but rather the consequence of a poor public transport system.
Then came a moment to savour for every listener who has ever had a taxi-driver let them down.
After he finished his debate with Browne and Fine Gael's Mr Ivan Yates, RTE offered to phone its regular hackney company to get Mr Murphy transport home. Mr Murphy refused to use a hackney and asked that RTE call a taxi. It did, and was told that the secretary of the Irish Taxi-Drivers' Federation would have to wait half an hour for his lift home.
Vincent Browne could scarcely stop laughing for long enough to give his listeners the news.
Never at the top of the general public's popularity charts, taxi-drivers come in for a particular hammering every Christmas. Queueing for over an hour in the middle of the day for a taxi to bring the Christmas shopping home turns even the most mild-mannered members of the public into fanatical advocates of deregulation.
The revelation in September that the man at the centre of the X case was driving a taxi and had been accused of sexually assaulting a teenage passenger undermined another plank of the taxi lobby's argument against deregulation.
Their contention that an open market would lead to all sorts of unsavoury characters driving taxis sounded rather hollow after it was discovered one of the most notorious criminals in the State had been driving one for over a year.
Rumblings from the Progressive Democrats about the shortage of taxis have also contributed to a bad year for taxi-drivers. However, while the Tanaiste came out in favour of deregulation in January of this year the Taoiseach's brother, Mr Noel Ahern, was quick to accuse her of undermining his brother's efforts to solve the problem.
Expressing his "shock and horror" at the Tanaiste's support for deregulation, Mr Ahern said he "would be unhappy to be associated with a Government that would casually throw [taxi-drivers] on the scrap heap by wiping out their investment overnight."
Despite having such staunch friends in high places, taxi-drivers show signs of realising that they will have to address public anger about the level of service they provide.
"We accept we have to improve the service we provide," the president of the Irish Taxi-Drivers' Federation, Mr John Ussher, said yesterday. He predicts that the new sharing system planned for this Christmas will make taxis more available.
The pilot scheme, which will get under way from the last weekend of November, will operate from Middle Abbey Street and Foster Place and will cover a nine-mile radius from the city centre.
The scheme will divide the city into three three-mile zones. Inside the first, a fare of £3.50 per person sharing will apply. Trips to the second and third zones will cost £4.50 and £6.50 per person sharing respectively. A minimum of three people will travel in each taxi, and larger taxis will be able to accommodate as many as seven people.
Marshals appointed by Dublin Corporation will control queues at the taxi-sharing ranks, which will operate from 11.30 p.m. to 4 a.m. Passengers will pay in advance and be issued with fare cards by the marshals, who will decide which passengers will travel with each other. There will be a Garda presence at each sharing rank.
Mr Tommy Gorman of the National Taxi-Drivers' Union says drivers are "over the moon" about the scheme. "We are delighted with it. Passengers will get home cheaper, and the drivers will be earning an extra few bob," he said. Dublin Corporation estimates that passengers could save between 10 and 40 per cent on their fares by using the scheme.
While the system may make taxis easier to find during the Christmas period, its operation over the New Year may be affected by the decision of the local authorities not to grant a request from taxi-drivers for triple fares on New Year's Eve.
As a longer-term solution the National Taxi-Drivers' Federation is meeting representatives of Dublin taxi companies to press them to unify their call-out systems.
"Issuing extra taxi licences won't solve the problem of taxi availability on its own," Mr Ussher said.
"If you ring a taxi at any particular time of day, then they'll give you the pick of their fleet which may be in the region of 100 to 200 taxis. I think the way forward is to give the public the pick of the 2,700 taxis that are out there at the moment."
However, Mr Ussher acknowledges that it will take time and a lot of persuasion to get the various taxi companies to co-operate. The federation is to lobby the Government for grant aid to help taxi companies establish a computerised system.
The only other hope for commuters in the shorter term is that the Minister of State, Mr Robert Molloy, will pull a rabbit out of the hat. On Wednesday of last week he promised proposals would be brought to Government within two to three weeks.
The action programme for the millennium was vague on the issue, promising only "the introduction of measures to increase progressively the number of taxi licences in Dublin as quickly as possible in order to ensure a proper balance between supply and demand in the market."
A spokesman for Mr Molloy said yesterday that proposals would be brought to Cabinet before Christmas, but could not comment on how quickly they would be implemented other than to say that the Department of the Environment and Local Government would be "coming out with all guns blazing once we have a decision."
Between now and then the long-suffering commuters of Dublin will have to hold their fire and hope that the 350 extra licences issued since last Christmas will combine with the new taxi-sharing system to shorten the queues.
