About 1,000 taxi drivers have now signed up for legal action against the State over the Government's handing of deregulation.
Two firms of solicitors are handling the cases which claim that the Government's decision to limit entry into the taxi industry for 25 years was illegal.
The cases, the majority of which are handled by the Limerick-based solicitors firm McMahon, O'Brien, Downes, are expected to come before the High Court within the next 12 months.
If successful, the actions could cost the State millions of euro and well in excess of the €15 million hardship fund it announced for drivers hit hardest by the Government's decision to deregulate the industry two years ago.
The cases do not centre on the Government's decision to de-regulate the industry, but claim its decision to regulate it in 1978 was illegal and in breach of competition law.
The Government opened the industry to full competition in November 2000, after the High Court ruled there was no basis on which to restrict the issuing of new taxi licences.
No new licences were issued between 1978 and 1990, during which time the value of plates increased dramatically. Unions say drivers who took out loans to buy licences, older people and those in ill health have suffered badly as a result of the sudden loss in value of the plates.
Mr Vincent Kearns of the National Taxi Drivers' Union said he hoped the court cases would restore "justice" to drivers.
"The pre-deregulation value of taxi licences was €400 million, yet the Government has offered just €15 million by way of hardship payments. If the cases are successful, the way they handled deregulation could prove to be one of the most costly errors the Government ever made," he said.
The union says its claims are backed up by a delegation from the European Parliament, which branded the Government's hardship scheme for drivers as "inadequate" and "derisory" and called on the Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, to significantly increase the fund. Mr Brennan has said there will be no compensation outside of the hardship fund due to be paid on a phased basis over the coming months.
This fund offers a sliding scale of payments, ranging from €15,000 to €3,000, for people such as the surviving spouses of drivers. Those who have claimed only the capital loss in the value of their licence are to get nothing.
Of the 4,000 taxi-drivers working when deregulation was introduced in November 2000, about 2,000 applied to the taxi hardship panel for compensation.
Unions have also called for the industry to be regulated to ensure standards are maintained, following a series of violent incidents involving new drivers.
Mr Brennan has appointed a regulator for the taxi industry who is drawing up a number of recommendations on a range of areas, such as entry criteria and presentation standards. Unions say they have no confidence in the new regulator and point out that the office has only been established on a non-statutory basis and is starved of resources.
