Taxi drivers to stage protest close to Dublin airport today

DUBLIN TAXI drivers have insisted they do not want to break the law or inconvenience the travelling public when they stage a protest close to Dublin airport today. The protest is to be on the main roundabout at the airport between 11am and 3pm.

The taxi drivers yesterday handed in a letter to Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey complaining of a lack of an appeals process in relation to the taxi regulator’s decisions.

The drivers are also angered at the number of licences being issued by the taxi regulator.

Speaking as he handed in the letter to the Minister’s office yesterday, Siptu’s taxi branch organiser Jerry Brennan said getting into the taxi business was not cheap. With a car, insurance, meter and sign, a taxi licence and other items, the start-up cost was realistically in the region of €26,0000.

The union was seeking a moratorium on taxi licences, but he said “it is not our intention to cause disruption to anybody. This is about taxi drivers’ rights.

“We are in a situation where every industry in the country is laying people off and the Commission for Taxi Regulation is issuing taxi licences. There is something morally wrong here.”

Mr Brennan said the regulator was “enticing people into the industry” and that the Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey was resisting the introduction of a moratorium on the issuing of new licences.

He said the taxi regulator could make decisions affecting drivers’ livelihoods and the drivers had no right of appeal to the Labour Court or the Labour Relations Commission. “It is hardly fair, is it,” he commented.

Mr Brennan also told The Irish Times"we are protesting . . . because, unlike virtually every other group in the workforce, taxi drivers have no right of appeal from decisions by the regulator under the Taxi Regulation Act of 2003".

“It’s time to stop dancing around the trees. The Minister knows what the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport wants, and he knows what we want,” Mr Brennan added.