The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, was coming under pressure last night from Fianna Fail backbenchers to ensure that new regulations to be introduced this week for the taxi industry do not result in full deregulation.
However, the Progressive Democrats are pushing for the liberalising of the sector and want additional taxis on the streets immediately to cope with the Christmas demand.
The orders to set standards for the issuing of new licences are being finalised by the Attorney General's office and the Department of the Environment. They may be published today.
The matter is not formally on the agenda of this morning's Cabinet meeting, but it is expected it will come up when Ministers discuss a Fine Gael private member's motion condemning the Government's "dismal efforts" on public transport, including taxis.
Two Dublin Fianna Fail TDs, Mr Noel Ahern and Mr Ivor Callely, spoke out in support of taxi-drivers yesterday, saying that deregulation was unfair to existing licence-holders. If it was introduced, many of them would deserve compensation.
The Minister of State for the Environment, Mr Robert Molloy, has said that compensation is not an issue because there is no provision obliging the State to compensate existing taxi-drivers if their licences, some of which cost up to £80,000, were to become devalued.
Mr Molloy has told The Irish Times that his primary concern is to get the regulations into place as quickly as possible so that people could apply for their licences and "get the taxis on the street". He estimated that 150 licence applications a week could be processed once the regime was in place.
Mr Ahern said he believed the Government could have brought in some sort of emergency legislation giving it control of the number of taxi licences to be issued, following the High Court judgment that it had no power to restrict the issuing of new licences to holders of existing licences.
However, since that had not been done, he said, the Government should arrange compensation through either tax relief or tax write-offs. He was concerned about the taxi-drivers who had remortgaged their homes in recent years to buy licences and who would now lose out.
He had spoken "briefly and informally" on the issue to the Taoiseach. While there was no obligation to compensate, this would be "kind or just or fair play".
Sources close to the Taoiseach have indicated that he believes quality control could be put in place to restrict entry and there would not be a free-for-all.
One of the ways proposed of restricting entry would be for all applicants for licences to have wheelchair-accessible vehicles. However, Mr Molloy said last week that this issue did not have to be dealt with at present.
Mr Callely said that the Dublin Taxi Forum should be reconvened to decide how to advance the issue. "The new orders should accommodate the additional licences required to service the city, but at the same time prevent a flood of licences that would have a rebounding effect on the industry and the public," he said, adding that he had spoken to the Taoiseach, who was "of a similar opinion to myself".