After their disruptive protest on O'Connell Street earlier this week, Rosita Boland finds the taxi drivers largely united and undeterred.
'The public have never really been with us," says Christy, a taxi driver at the Clerys rank in Dublin. "It's because the guys in the charge of the unions are not articulate enough, so the public never understand what we're looking for."
It's Thursday and there are some nine taxis lined up at the rank, with a couple of drivers stretching their legs and smoking while waiting to pick up fares. Most of the drivers are happy enough to talk, but not one of them wants to give a surname. On Monday, Dublin city centre became paralysed when some 1,000 drivers staged an impromptu protest by parking on and around O'Connell Street, effectively blocking the city's main artery for several hours, stranding home-going bus passengers, and causing traffic jams that extended as far as Whitehall.
Monday's was the fourth protest since July over a proposed new set of regulations and fare structures, which are due to come into effect on September 25th. The disruption - on an evening of torrential rain - is unlikely to have won over any members of the travelling public to the drivers' demands. However, while the drivers at the Clerys rank agree that the public might be fed up with them, all of them defend the protest. And Ger Deering, the taxi regulator appointed by the then minister for transport, Seamus Brennan, in 2004, is clearly as unpopular with the drivers as the drivers are with the public.
"How else were we to get our point across except by blocking the traffic when that fella won't talk to us?" Nick states. "He's not giving us a look in at all. It's like we're back in 1913 and there's a lockout. It's either his way or the highway."
"The more militant taxi guys are getting frantic now," Christy says. "I think they thought they could talk to Deering, but they're realising they can't."
"He didn't negotiate anything," Gerry, who's been driving a taxi for nine years, says flatly. "He won't take on board anything anyone is saying. He's just bringing in all the changes himself." Of Monday's protest, Gerry says that he doesn't agree "with holding people to ransom". He wasn't there himself, but he didn't work that day. Like some of the others, he's not happy about earning nothing while on strike, whether physically there with all the others in the blockage or staying off the road. He goes on to say: "But there have always been militant guys in the taxi business who swing the majority, and I always go with the majority and the rest of the drivers should do the same."
"I wouldn't say the public are fed up with us, I'd say they're just curious to know what we want," Neil says. He wasn't protesting on O'Connell Street on Monday, but he didn't work that day either, in a show of solidarity. "I stayed in bed. I suppose I was there with them in spirit, but I wasn't actually there. I'll tell you one thing: if we go on strike for the Ryder Cup, it'll be all Deering's fault."
Some drivers agree that Monday's protest has made them even more unpopular, but they all seem resigned to being permanently unpopular with the public, and therefore having very little goodwill to lose.
"We know the public hates us collectively, but 99 per cent of them tell us that they have no problem with us when they get into our taxis. So maybe they don't really hate us," Liam says hopefully.
"My honest opinion is that what happened on O'Connell Street was out of order," Patrick says. But the next minute, he backtracks, adding that "it was only an inconvenience, people could have driven around us. What else could we do? We're only beginning to realise that the unions have sold us short. The unions have sold us up the Khyber."
He is no longer a member of a taxi union. (Some 3,000 of the State's 17,000 drivers don't belong to one of the three taxi unions.) He thinks the notion of striking for the Ryder Cup is nonsense; not because he doesn't agree with it, but because he thinks they won't be able to make a point by doing so. "What are 500 taxis going to do by blocking access to the K Club? It's nothing new. The traffic is always at a standstill there anyway."
At the Dame Street rank, Mark, who is from Rwanda and has been driving a Dublin taxi for three years, says he totally agrees with Monday's protest. "The regulator has to talk to the unions. It's hard enough work driving a taxi without all these regulations that are going to come in."
Another driver, Frank, agrees that the public is getting fed up, but he doesn't have much sympathy. "At the end of the day, it's going to be us, not the public, who's out of pocket if these new regulations come in." He was among those protesting on O'Connell Street. "I was there - I was there in the rain," he stresses.
"I think part of the problem is that there is a lack of understanding about how the regulatory process works," Ger Deering tells me later that day. "Unfortunately, the taxi drivers are ignoring the fact that there was a year of consultation, and that their union representatives were part of the consultation process.
"The taxi drivers seemed to think that they would have all the regulations run past them for approval before it was finally agreed. But that's not the way a regulatory process works. You can't allow any one sector to dictate the terms, or give one sector everything they want. You have to strike a balance between consumers and the needs of the industry, and that is what I think we have done."
Deering is now scheduled to meet union leaders on Monday to discuss their concerns about the new regulations. A meeting of the three taxi unions to debate the issue of further protests by drivers, which was originally to take place the same day, has thus been deferred to Tuesday at the earliest.