Disaffected taxi drivers threaten to go 'French-style'

Taxi drivers are up in arms about an independent report that argues against the need for a moratorium on taxi licences

TAXI DRIVERS waiting to get onto one of the busiest ranks in the State earlier in the week are, to a man, disillusioned and even despairing about their industry.

Paul Robertson, from Lucan has been parked on Foster Place, adjacent to the College Green rank in Dublin, for about 40 minutes. He is confident of getting onto the rank in about 20 minutes, where he can then start to ply for trade. He tells how he started work at 8am.

In times gone by, he “would always have got a fare on the way into town”. If he didn’t he’d pull up at the rank at Heuston station “but that is always jammed full half way up to Kilmainham every morning now, so I keep going into town.”

He got his first fare at 9.30am, and so far, at almost 2pm, has made “about €30”. He put €35 worth of diesel into his car this morning, so he is still €5 short of breaking even.

“You could be lucky and make €100 in a day, but I’m working a 60 hour weeks to get that, and that’s a good week. When I started in this work I used to start at 8am and by 4 in the afternoon you’d have €140 made and you go and get other things done. Now I’ve no free time.

“My family? No they’re not impressed but what can I do? There’s no other jobs out there.”

He has invested about €9,000 in his plate, meter and other “bits and pieces”, and on top of that there’s the €12,000 he spent on a car. “It is getting ridiculous, but I’m not as bad as some of lads who are missing payments on their mortgages, whose marriages are suffering.”

He has been on all the recent taxi drivers’ protests. As have the five other drivers who speak to The Irish Times in the Foster Place queue. They describe the lengthening and anti-social hours, the dwindling wage and the fact there are too few rank spaces in the city and drivers are liable to fines of up to €250 if they pull up to ply for business anywhere other than at a rank.

But most of all there are, they say, just too many taxis seeking a share of a shrinking market. There should be a moratorium on any more licences being issued by the Commission for Taxi Regulation, they say.

SINCE THE LIBERALISATION of the market by then minister of state Bobby Molloy in 2000, the number of taxis nationally has increased from 4,218 to 21,177 last year. The Dublin figure has increased from 2,757 to 12,568 last year.

Anger has spilled onto the streets, with protests being organised by both Siptu and a growing grass-roots organisation, Taxi Drivers for Change. They have marched on foot and travelled in convoys in their vehicles. On Monday there was a nationwide stoppage, with taxi services withdrawn for 24 hours. All to little avail.

Some drivers had resisted protesting until an independent report, commissioned by the Commissioner for Taxi Regulation, Kathleen Reynolds, was published by Goodbody Economic Consultants.

Its publication in the first week of March turned drivers’ worry and frustration to rage. The authors concluded “drivers’ earnings are not collapsing” and “the present regulatory structure should be retained”.

Though they concede “cab drivers are working longer hours to achieve their income targets and on an hourly basis they are earning well below the average industrial wage”, in a key death-knell sentence for drivers’s hopes of a licence moratorium, they say: “There is an insufficient justification, at present, for an adjustment to the regulatory structure through the introduction of a moratorium.”

According to Frank Byrne, one of the organisers of Taxi Drivers for Change: “The report has no credibility. The data used are out of date and at this stage we are going to have to get militant. We are going to have to go French-style.”

Asked what he meant by this, he said a meeting would be held by Taxi Drivers for Change in the next week to decide where to go from here. “We are going to have to get louder and we are going to have to go political. There are local elections coming up and we will be calling for a change.”

For consumers, however, with memories of the long, long walks home on a Friday or Saturday night, there will be little appetite for a return to regulation.

The regulator says she commissioned the independent report and asks what more she can do now that it has reported unambiguously. Furthermore, she says she cannot move unilaterally to halt the issuing of licences. A change in primary legislation is needed.

Which is the main reason Taxi Drivers for Change say there is no point in them meeting her as part of her consultations with the public and the industry on the report. “It’s the Minister for Transport we need to deal with.”

A spokesman for the Minister said he will consider the Goodbody review, the view of the Oireachtas Committee on Transport, and the views of recognised representatives of the taxi industry before setting out next steps.

Economists, and the Competition Authority, argue the market will find its level and only those who can make a living will stay in the business. Reynolds says this is already happening, with a sharp decline in new drivers.

The figures reflect this. From January to June in 2008, there were approximately between 250 to 350 new taxi entrants per month. This started to drop off in June and by November there were 180 new entrants a month.

In January this year this had dropped further to 90 new drivers. The figure in February was 89 and March 87.

ONE ECONOMIST, WHO does not want to named as he has friends in the industry, believes there will be a rationalisation, where drivers will join firms and dispatch operators, who will compete with each other on fares, offering discounts and negotiating rates with businesses.

While taxi drivers would not become employees as such, they would have some degree of comfort in not having to source all their own business over 10- to 14-hour days. Asked if this would suit, one of the drivers at Foster Place says he likes working for himself. It is for this reason he doesn’t want to leave and find work elsewhere, despite the problems.

“Once you’ve worked for yourself, it’s very hard to turn your back on that.”