Taxis: strong views from a weak service

AT 7am two days after Christmas, my wife and I gingerly deposited a very irate son at Dublin airport for a flight to London where he works.

The reason for his (justifiable) anger was, in his own words, “Dublin’s Third World taxi service” which from previous bitter experience he had been reluctant to test over the Christmas period.

However, after socialising the previous night on the northside of the city, he started out to hail a taxi home.

He walked and walked, sighting on the way only the odd taxi which was either full or refusing to take a fare. He arrived home in upper Rathfarnham from Raheny at 5.20am, leaving him little more than 45 minutes to crash out on the bed, shower and gather up his things.

Devouring a sandwich in the back of the car along the M50, he fumed that he would never come back to Dublin where, as he said, when you finally get a taxi you must then endure the “most opinionated, negative crap from the drivers”.

Oliver McGrane

32 Marley Ave

Rathfarnham

Dublin 16