Taxi-drivers and gardai swap blame for chaos in Dublin

Dublin taxi-drivers and the gardai have blamed each other for the traffic chaos which engulfed the centre of the capital yesterday morning. Traffic in O'Connell Street and many approach roads to the city centre was gridlocked throughout the normal rush-hour period, after protesting taxi-drivers stopped work and attempted to drive in convoy to a meeting with Dublin Corporation.

The president of the Irish Taxi Drivers' Federation, Mr John Ussher, said there had been no intention to cause traffic disruption, and claimed the problem arose only when gardai refused to let the drivers proceed in convoy. He added the taxi-drivers would have to sit down "and look at what went wrong today, because everything that could go wrong did".

But a Garda spokesman said it would have been "absolutely logistically impossible" to let the taxis proceed in convoy. "We make no apology for that. We're talking about in excess of 300 taxis at 7.30 in the morning when rush-hour has already begun. It would have taken at least an hourand-a-half to let them all through together."

He added that until yesterday morning gardai had no warning of the extent of the protest. "We'd been told by them that traffic disruption was not on the agenda, and it wasn't until the convoy moved off after their meeting in O'Connell Street that we knew the extent of the traffic involved."

The procession of taxis, which the ITDF claimed numbered more than 600 at the height of the protest, left O'Connell Street at 6.40 a.m. following a meeting of drivers at 5 a.m. There followed a stand-off with gardai at O'Connell Bridge, while the drivers sought clearance to continue in an unbroken sequence.

"The gardai at O'Connell Bridge told us they'd have to wait for their hierarchy to say whether they could turn off the lights and let us go in convoy," Mr Ussher said. "Then at 7.30 a.m. they said they'd only let us go with the green lights, and on top of everything else they had tow-trucks parked on the route, which slowed everything down even more."

The protest continued later near the Civic Offices at Wood Quay, with taxi-drivers linking arms to prevent a Garda tow truck approaching. During an 80-minute meeting with corporation officials, the protesters were told their grievances would be referred to a consultancy body. They dispersed at 4.30 p.m.

Mr Ussher said the taxi-drivers' representatives would "sit down with the gardai" and discuss the problem. But he restated the protesters' position that yesterday was "only day one" of their campaign. The dates of further protests would not be decided until issues arising from yesterday's experience were dealt with, he added.

The Automobile Association said it was "one of the worst situations in Dublin for a very long time," with traffic at a standstill on all except two or three routes in the centre of Dublin. "There was a lot of anger among motorists, and we had reports of people driving on footpaths in O'Connell Street trying to escape the gridlock."

Dublin Chamber of Commerce criticised the protest, saying it was "outrageous that a group within the `service sector' can flagrantly abuse its position" to resist decisions with which it disagreed. "Once again the city has had a gun held to its head by taxi-drivers who consistently show no regard for the public that they depend on for a living," a spokesman said.

He was also critical the handling of the protest by the gardai, but accused the AA and RTE of adding to the problems of city centre traders by telling the public to stay away from Dublin for the day. He claimed the protest cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to businesses in O'Connell Street alone.

Meanwhile, the Irish Wheelchair Association expressed "extreme anger" at the way the issue of wheelchair-accessible taxis was being used in the dispute. Its chief executive officer, Mr Seamus Thompson, said he was "amazed" to hear taxi-drivers complain about rises in the cost of special licences when "as far as wheelchair users are concerned taxi operators are simply content to ignore wheelchair-using members of the public". See also page 14