‘Drivers tell people to get out of your car’

“YOU encounter problems with your fellow taxi drivers, ordinary people and even the guards. Often people just walk past your cab and other coloured people’s cabs at the rank to get into an indigenous taxi-driver’s car.”

“Then you have hackney drivers harassing you, telling you to leave the area, telling people to get out of your car, that you’re not local, you’re not safe you don’t have insurance, nine out of 10 times they do get out your car.”

This is the daily experience of work for Felmi, a Nigerian taxi driver since August 2007.

Working the Dublin commuter towns of Maynooth, Celbridge and Leixlip he reveals that even though he has a full taxi licence, hackney drivers openly encourage fairs not to take his cab, even though it is illegal for them to pick-up roadside customers.

In Felmi’s view it comes down to two simple things. “It is racism firstly. Then the economy is getting very bad. If there is enough business there for everybody they won’t have time for all that, and because they know they can get away with it.”

Felmi said he has complained to gardaí but nothing has been done.

“They say you must go to the taxi regulator with your complaint. When you contact the regulator they tell you it is the gardaí who must enforce the law, you’re caught in between.”

Since the deregulation of the taxi industry in 2000 the number of taxis has increased more than five fold. In 2000 there were 3,900 small public service vehicle licences, that allow a car to be used as a taxi, there are now 21,000, with much more people holding the necessary licences to work as a taxi driver. The increased competition resulting in some drivers working 70 to 80 hour weeks.

National Taxi Drivers Union (NTDU) president Tommy Gorman feels it is the failure of deregulation which is resulting in growing tensions between the Irish taxi drivers and what he estimates to be up to 3,000 non-national drivers.

He puts this partly down to what he believes is up to 50% of non-national drivers working “illegally”.

Mr Gorman states that he has heard of a number of cases at police check-points where taxis have been abandoned by unlicensed drivers.

The NTDU holds that many people driving taxis only have a visa that allows them to work in PAYE jobs rather than run a small business as taxis are categorised. Mr Gorman also believed people should have to be resident in Ireland for three to five years before being eligible for a taxi licence.

“It is right to have somebody driving a taxi when they land from a country where you can have any vetting on them?”

However, the NTDU has distanced itself from the approach of the Cork Taxi men’s Association which has refused membership to non-nationals, Mr Gorman pointing out that he has had experience of emigration himself working as a taxi driver in Canada.

However Mr Gorman believes that “total liberalisation of the business has been a disaster. It’s created a situation where people born and raised in the country where their operating can no longer earn a living in it and where family life is destroyed by the hours drivers must now work”.

A spokesperson of the Taxi Regulator said: “The Commission for Taxi Regulation and An Garda Síochána, the vehicle and driver licensing authorities respectively, treat all applicants for an SPSV licence the same, regardless of nationality. Neither body record nationalities of drivers. All drivers are required to speak English, hold an Irish driving licence or EU equivalent and have geographical knowledge of the area in which they are operating.”

The spokesperson added that since early 2009 all new entrants to the industry have had to pass a industry knowledge test; which will be rolled out to existing drivers from this year. The Commission reports incidences of discrimination to the gardaí or Equality Authority and has pointed out that a new driver skills development programme will have been undertaken by all drivers by 2012 which includes a module on diversity.