Taxi drivers’ ‘rights’ action might benefit us all

Must we continue to put up with inefficiency because of so-called property rights?

How often have we heard over recent years that because of property rights we cannot change the terms, conditions and pensions of senior civil servants, bankers and others? These folk seem to occupy that place euphemistically called the ‘Golden Circle’.

Even in recent days, après budget, as government sought to deprive us of more and more of our hard earned money, it made sure to protect the pensions of senior public servants on the basis of their reasonable expectations and ‘property rights’.

What I, and many others do not understand, is how come this property rights mantra only applies to certain folk but not to the population at large. Over recent years government and its henchmen in the Revenue seem to have their hands in our pockets on a permanent basis.

We’ve been paying into a national pension/unemployment protection scheme, namely PRSI, and now the hated Universal Charge, for most of our lives yet government has no problem changing the rules on how and how much we benefit irrespective of our reasonable expectations.

Some of us thought we were lucky when we were offered a defined pension scheme by our employers. We quite rightly had a reasonable expectation that the scheme would be honoured when we retired and we would receive the promised pension. Was that not a ‘property right’?

However, most of the defined benefit schemes have collapsed and with it any chance we might have of getting that pension we worked so hard for. So how come these boys and girls at the top of government, the public sector and the banks seem to be able to continue to expect that their defined benefit pension, or however they term it, will be paid.

Given that the state of the economy came courtesy of many of these same individuals why are they not being fired for incompetence, or worse.

In the last few days an interesting case has reached the High Court. It could have a big bearing on so-called ‘property rights’. In fact, if the taxi drivers win their case it could widen the concept of ‘property rights’ even further. In so doing we could limit forever any real reform to our inefficient and ineffective systems on this little island, for fear of impacting on someone’s property rights and reasonable expectations.

Most of us will remember how difficult it was at the latter end of the last century, to get a taxi, particularly on weekend nights. Taxi plates were extremely valuable and were changing hands at €100k.

The demand was there but because of an effective closed shop the supply was not there. Government, rightly or wrongly, addressed it by deregulating the market and providing a taxi licence to anyone who was suitably qualified. Guess what happened? The numbers of taxis soared but the price of plates nose-dived.

A number of drivers are suing, inter alia, the Government for what they claim was a ‘breach of their property rights’. Furthermore, they are claiming that the compensation for past and future losses offered by the Government was inadequate. If the taxi drivers lose will that mean that our ‘reasonable expectations’ that we would receive a specific return amount to a hill of beans?

On the other hand if the taxi drivers win will that mean that any actions taken by government that change the expected financial return mean that reasonable compensation must be paid? For instance, if Government action or indeed Government incompetence changes what our ‘reasonable expectations would be’ will we be entitled to compensation?

None of it makes any sense — a bit like government making special rules for its own friends. It just might be the taxi drivers, in taking this action, are doing us all a favour.