"We're absolutely appalled by it. It's totally off the wall. It means that the guy who sold his plate for £50,000 or £60,000 and got a hackney licence can now come back into the market as a taxi-driver in all but name," said Mr Vincent Kearns of the Taxi-Drivers' Union. In a joint statement the union and the Taxi-Drivers' Federation, calling themselves the Dublin Area Taxi Association, condemned the proposals in the Oscar Faber report. They said they would not "see the jobs of our members disappear". About 30 members met in Dublin yesterday evening to discuss a plan of action.
"Deregulation won't work," Mr Kearns said. "Let the Government try and deregulate pubs and see how they feel." Mr Kearns's members were extremely angry about the proposals.
"We're all horrified and mystified," Mr Tommy Gorman of the Taxi-Drivers' Union said. "Even some of the councillors are mystified. We're hoping the local authorities will have a little more vision than the consultants had. There's no way the business can accommodate these kinds of numbers."
Mr Gorman said taxi-drivers would not be proposing anything other than "talking" yesterday, but there could be another protest such as that last October when taxi-drivers brought the city to a standstill protesting over licence fees and fares.
Cllr Stanley Laing, chairman of the Joint Taxi/Hackney Committee of the four Dublin local authorities, welcomed the report. "It is important that we realise the full potential of taxis and hackneys as part of the region's public transport services."
The Green Party spokeswoman on the taxi issue, Ms Claire Wheeler, welcomed the report, saying however that the reasons for its conclusions were not given. "It is imperative that the proposed Dublin taxi/hackney consultative group of service providers and users be set up immediately," she said.
The Fine Gael spokeswoman on Dublin traffic, Ms Olivia Mitchell, said she hoped decisions could be "made free from political interference and intimidation by sections of the industry".
