Who cannot but feel sorry for the taxi-drivers of Dublin? For years they have been assured that the purpose of the State was to ensure that the value of their plates did not depreciate; for years they had every reason to believe that the primary function of government was to protect their monopoly. Did anyone in power tell them in soft, strong words, the ones one might use to a spoilt delinquent child smashing up the nursery, that this sort of thing must stop?
No-one did. For years, we have seen huge nightly queues at the taxi-ranks. For years, we have seen the pitiful sight of hundreds of stragglers tottering home on high heels and low spirits because it was simply impossible to get a cab. For years now, we have learned that the "booking" system of ordering a cab was meaningless; that even if you ordered a taxi 12 hours before you needed it, the taxi controller wouldn't start looking for one until a quarter-of-an-hour before the appointed booking - at which time, every single taxi in the company was in Dalkey, and as for you and your booking in the city centre: pity.
Airport strike
Dublin's taxi-drivers had a monopoly protected by the State, and lived in fear of nothing. During the scandalous unofficial SIPTU strike at Dublin airport nearly two years ago, taxi-drivers decided not to pass the unofficial picket, and chose instead to dump their passengers and luggage a mile from the airport, in a studied and ruthless contravention of the very conditions on which their taxi-plates were issued.
Did anyone take action against these drivers? Did Aer Rianta withdraw the rights of these delinquents to ply for hire in Dublin Airport? Did the Carriage Office investigate this abuse of power, which obliged the travellers of Dublin, including the disabled and old, to totter towards their destination carrying their bags? Did a single taxi-driver lose his right to ply for hire because of this abuse?
But listen. The taxi-drivers are not to blame. They were a monopoly; and there has not been a monopoly in the history of the world, from the East India Company to CIE to the Incorporated Law Society, which did not think its protection from competition was not merely a divine mandate from a heaven, but a very boon and blessing for the general public too. Did we not hear it from Aer Lingus - that airline deregulation would cause chaos, poverty, child-slavery, venereal disease, and outbreaks of sodomy and murrain among our cattle?
Monopolies create for themselves a virtuous world in which they are the knights, defending the helpless public from the ravages of inhuman, unpatriotic, sordid competition. Monopolies know what's best. Monopolies are in the public's interest. Monopolies understand the market. Monopolies ensure high standards.
Monopolies do not cut corners. (And, incidentally, in the case of Dublin taxi-drivers, monopolies apparently involve the amputation of the hand for using the indicator.)
Politicians
Don't blame the monopolists. They're only doing what is human, attending to their own best interest. Blame instead the politicians who conferred and guarded that monopoly. Who, for example, are the Dublin TDs who secretly lobbied against the issuing of extra plates? Are they themselves owners of plates? In their addresses to the electorates of their constituencies, will they proudly defend the rights of Dublin taxi-drivers to be not there when their constituents need them? Or will they find other words in public which do not quite fit in with their private sentiments?
Not that the issuing of new licences breaks the monopoly. It merely enlarges it. The whole plate-system is rotten and corrupt, and remains in place because of the influence and power of those individuals who have accumulated large numbers of plates which they sublease at huge profit. It is not the business of the State to protect such investments, but it is the business of the State to protect the interest of the public.
In other words, deregulate taxis. One non-transferable, relatively inexpensive plate per driver. Drivers must pass tests, including the highly complex one of using the indicator even as they drive.
Difficult, I know, but there you are. Journalists have to type and spell, sort of; surgeons have to rummage around in people's interiors, whipping out livers and lights; and taxidrivers have to indicate and drive at the same time. OK?
Geography
And they must speak passable English and know the geography of the city they work in. This means they won't be like New York taxi-drivers, who seem to be fluent in Martian but not much else, and who have trouble telling the difference between Kennedy Airport and Kansas City. Their hapless passengers only realise for the first time that they're probably not going to catch that Concorde flight for Paris, France when they see the sign saying Cincinatti 50.
I'm sorry for drivers who invested in plates which might have lost value; so am I sorry for people who invested in Eircom shares and who have seen the price drop. We don't elect governments to make sure investments are invariably profitable. In the meantime, the taxi-drivers who use their taxis to block airports should simply have the right to ply for hire withdrawn. For ever. It's a tough old world.