Taxi strike - Ryder Cup is for golf — not rip-offs

THE taxi drivers are due to strike from 6am today until 1pm in protest against national charges, set by the taxi regulator, who is also outlawing baggage pickup charges. Previously local authorities set the charges.

The three unions involved in today’s strike, the Taxi Drivers Federation, the National Taxi Drivers Union, and SIPTU, which claim to represent between 70% and over 80% of the taxi drivers, contend that these changes could cost each driver around €4,500 annually.

Today’s action is not likely to do anybody any good, unless it brings home to the taxis drivers themselves that they are on a dangerous course.

Their actions seem like an attempt to hold the public to ransom in relation to the three-day Ryder Cup at the K Club in Co Kildare next week.

The event is expected to attract some 40,000 spectators to the course each day, and should therefore generate around €130 million for the Irish tourism and the hospitality industries.

In addition, it should afford a tremendous opportunity to sell the country by attracting a phenomenal international television audience on both sides of the Atlantic.

It is a unique opportunity for publicity to boost our tourism and hospitality industries, but all this could be marred, if transportation to and from the course is seriously disrupted.

A comparatively few greedy people seem bent on exploiting the situation for their own selfish ends.

Foreign tourists must not return home with the idea that the golf contest was allowed to degenerate into an excuse for orgy of extortionist tactics.

It could do incalculable damage to our tourist and hospitality industries as well as to our economy as a whole, if the Ryder Cup in this country is remembered more for the rip-offs rather than the golf.