I always think back to the reeling in the years during the last airport strike 10 years ago. There was streams of tourists arriving with trolleys full of bags not knowing what to do. It ruined their holiday, one English couple in particular in tears vowed to never return. I’m sure many more never did.

No points for you so. My dad is and I hate this shit saying theyre all lazy slobs that drives bangers because it simply isnt true!

I used to regularly get taxis John and found at least 70% of them to be racist, whiney and Know it alls that if you try have a different opinion than them on something they’ll shut off and become ignorant for the rest of the journey and some have often smoked, I could have reported them but i just thought id stop using them and not put someone out of work. They’re constantly speeding and breaking laws like parking on kerbs, driving up my arse and breaking red lights. They complain about prices increasing like petrol,taxes and insurance yet can’t get come to the simple conclusion that they need a career switch, all of the taxis for the last 5 years have known the Facts and figures that there is far too many taxi permits out there and its simple economics of demand and supply, when theres not enough demand to meet supply you either lower prices, increase quality or just stop altogether so its time for taxi drivers to wake up to the facts. Yesterday and today ive seen comments from people saying they’ve waited 3 hours to get a fair so if this true why are they even bothered with Dublin Airport , its obviously not a high turnover area.

@ John Ryan

You see John,I am not the only one and these are the reasons why most people have no sympathy for taxi drivers.As a result taxi drivers like your father(if he’s as good as you say he is) suffer,when it comes to situations like this.

Forgetting about the company I work for. My partner and I missed a flight last June and had to get a taxi 19 miles home with one bag each we asked for a price up front. 105 euros. I laughed and asked if he was taking the piss as we got out we went to the taxi behind and the first driver shouts back 105, second driver shrugs and says 105. He says the first guy in line sets the price. I can’t under cut the taxi at the top of the line. Made a call to my local taxi driver 55 euros. Theives and nothing more.

with ya there Cathal, prices are too high as It is!

Why stop at taxi drivers? Tips must be earned and in a well-paid country like Ireland are unnecessary.

They ll be devastated

I wonder how many times that the taxi drivers have being on strike in the past ten years or would NASA be too busy keeping an eye on curiosity to work it out for us.

From reading the DAA statement:
-Same number of spaces as 2010,
-DAA traffic down since 2010,
-Permit holders down 300 since 2010,
-Months notice given to taxi drivers about the change.

Taxi drivers don’t dispute any of the above but yet feel that they can hold the country to ransom. Some of them should take a drive to the towns outside Dublin that rely almost wholly on Irish tourism to put bread on their table and see try to imagine the long term damage that they are causing. This will leave a scar with many tourists who will pass these negative comments about our country to many of their friends

The DAA should allow school bus opperators to run a service from the airport. They are available all day for the next week or so and for large chuncks of the day even when the schools open. If they are safe enough to carry our kids, they would be fine to carry passengers into town.

With due respect, you obviously have absolutely no understanding of the issues affecting the taxi industry. 1) the taxi industry has the highest rate of suicide of any industry in this country. 2) there are in excess of 3000 permits issued but only 300 taxi spaces at the airport. 3) drivers pay in advance for permits but can be forced to leave the airport if no spaces are available… In effect… We PAY for the right to provide a service but are then denied from doing so 4) drivers are working up to 90 hrs a week for next to nothing. As i type this, i have worked 7 hrs for a total of €27. This equals less than €4 per hour!!! And that is gross earnings not net. Do not say i should leave the industry if i cant make a living…most taxi drivers are over 40 yo and have absolutely no chance of competing with younger people for scarce jobs. Finally, 75% of all passengers thru Dublin airport travel via private car. There are also many bus services. Ultimately, the DAA are doing what semi states/public bodies do all the time… Taking money from the the private sector and then persecuting same. If these bodies were accountable the country would not be the BANANA REPUBLIC it is.

@ Fred. with all due respect most of your points are not valid 1) i cannot comment on suicide rates as its an area i am not familiar with. 2) the 3000 permits are given out not for the use of the parking space for the day but for the collection of passengers only. the waiting time may be long to collect a fare however it is only seen as a temporary waiting zone therefore providing a space for 10% of the permits given is adequate. 3) Taxi drivers pay 1.20 a day for use of the collection zone. if you take into account a daily fare count of 3-4 which is still below what is the average seeing as 25% of passengers use taxis this amounts to 30c to 40c for use of services per a fare. 4) Drivers choice there hours of work. most of this time is spent sitting on ranks and travelling to and from the airport? do you actually think taxi drivers should be compensated for these? i work 45 minutes from my workplace so whould i get 1.5 hours extra pay? … and on your other point, in a report issued in 2011 looking into passengers passing through Dublin airport it says 50% car and van, 25% taxis and 25% buses. the reason for this is because of the prices airport taxis charge, eg bag charges, set amount fares. also because the quality of service given has declined over the last number of years. You arent angry at the DAA you are angry at your failure to notice read between the lines that Taxi driving isnt profitable anymore. similar to some trades however you dont see the carpenters, electricians, painters etc out striking. They simply put it down to experienc, move on and take up a course and interest in some other profession.

Well then don’t go to the Airport and sit for two to three hours wasting your time, go out onto the streets and look for a fare!

@ Fred,

why do you think you and your colleagues have the right to effectively shut the airport down for anyone who does not have access to a car / bus. What have the following groups of people who are seriously affected by your selfish actions done to you?
1. Families returning from holidays with lots of luggage and young children tired after their flights,
2. First time tourists whose image of Ireland could be irreparably damaged due to a stressful few hours trying to travel to their hotels,
3. International business people, its well known that Ireland is full of multinationals and that these multinationals employees travel extensively between their various sites.

I notice that ye don’t have the spine to go on a full strike, ye are happy enough to still drop passengers to the airport.

There are over 1500 permits given out every year by the DAA @ €440 each, there are only 120 legal parking spaces at any given time to cater for the 1500+ , if the DAA can’t accommodate the taxis they shouldn’t charge the fee.

If the taxi drivers can’t get the parking space at the airport, which it says on the permit ‘subject to availability’ they shouldn’t buy the permit! And there is well more than 120 spaces

@ Alice, You might want to think about that one a little further……

-Not all the taxis which have permits are on duty at the one time,
-Not all the taxis which have permits work at the airport 100% of the time, some might switch to city pick ups,
-Just because a taxi is on airport duty does not mean they need a parking space, its fairly obvious that once a taxi picks up a fare there is a good chance they will be away for up to an hour
-etc
-etc

Agreed Gary,
Whilst the ‘strike’ is going on the DAA should just allow unrestricted access to any taxi, and see how long it takes for the striking drivers to come running back to work…

Are you incapable of telling a driver to be quiet????

Well done Eddie for exposing those clowns for what they really are. The guards need to get in there and sort them out now.

Oh how i wouldve wished for a big coach to come along…they’d soon remove their corolla barricade.

They should be arrested and charged for public order offences

50 drivers out of 1600…paint everyone with the same brush why don’t you.

There’s the problem Glen,”50 out 1600″ Do you not realize its those 50 that are giving the rest of you a bad name,why people have no sympathy for you??? Instead of you trying to claim a small number of bad apples,you should be trying to fix your own industry from within.

Glen, there were 50 at the T2 rank and I assume more at T1. But there were also more protesting on the roads coming in so it was not just 50 drivers. That being said I do know it was the minority giving the majority a bad name.

With more doing a go slow protest around the airport it is just pissing off the general public. I do understand that the taxi industry is is serious trouble but the clown arranging the protest need to see that they are doing more harm than good to the industry. I for one will be refusing to use a taxi with a DAA permit for the foreseeable future. I am going to vote with my feet.

Did you report the taxi man/men ?????

€6 per case, by any chance could you had got Michael O’Leary’s Taxi???

You were treated in a disgusting fashion. There are some nasty drivers operating at the airport but as the saying goes Caveat Emptor (buyer beware) you are entitled to a printed receipt..Claim it!! This is your principle protection from that kind of treatment. Over charging occurs in all kinds of industries and there are plenty of nasty people in the world sadly.

The principle reasons there are so many taxis is as follows… 1) there is a huge number of illegal unlicensed taxis operating. There is no enforcement of regulations at all. I am 14 yrs in the industry and i am still waiting to be randomly inspected. 2) the age profile of drivers mitigates against leaving the industry. I am 44 with all the costa etc of that age group ie mortgage, car loan etc, i can not compete with someone in their 20′s for example on salary. We provide an essential service, some of us endeavour to provide a high quality service but we are prevented from doing this because of the on going incompetence of Gardai, revenue,social welfare, dept of transport, minister Varadkar and the taxi regulator!!

i agree with alot of what your saying..the job is full of aulfellas constantly giving out about how it is now…always looking to have a strike. they made a fortune for years and had it all their own way and are living in the passed. they have no mortgages..no expenses..and to be honest most of them are widowed and only go out there to play cards and get their dinner and chat. should be made retire .

That seems to be the case – looking at the comments on a newspapers site has this gem from earlier in the morning:

“Time for solidarity comrades. The DAA have no problem charging drivers 440 euros for permits and then refusing to supply adequate spaces. A blockade of the roundabout and other access routes to the airport for about a week should put manners on them.”

Put manners on them? Strikes me as being very arrogant.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0823/breaking1.html

If they block the access routes their cars should be seized and crushed and their taxi licences permanently revoked, who the f*ck do they think they are to hold the rest of the country to ransom!

Bottom of the barrel???? Its a job/service like any other. How many participants in top of the barrel jobs , like the legal profession, have been sent to prison this year or censored or banned from working in their chosen profession?? I would rather be a taxi driver than a banker thats for sure. You??

That happened to me too… Except I was only going as far as the clarion hotel approx 700 meters away :)

That’s an interesting suggestion Paul wouldn’t be hard to do / police either could be based on the roof sign’s last number odds one weekend evens the other ? They should have a standard car and colour though that everyone has to adhere to if they want to be in this career ? Yellow taxi New York has worked for decades … I saw a vw golf as a taxi in Dublin cringe when tourists see it …

I know its crazy, they’re always parked on the double yellow lines around to the main Airport roundabout blocking traffic to all the carparks there and the hotel. Even when Airport police or the Gardai come they still refuse to move, if it was just us the normal Joe Soap we’d be fined to the hilt!

@hammer time . Are you sure you were jetlagged , and not on something else , 120 quid worse fool you for paying it !

i agree totally with your idea…well put.!

well actually no government owns the taxi industry .Secondly no taxi driver in any part of the world only does “eight hours “work ,thats nonsense.the rest of your comment is laughable and farsicial.
As for being “ripped off”.
have you no mouth on you to tell said driver the way you wanted to go or do you just go to internet forums and complain there !

@ Lee jones , jaysus lee are you a complete g******e , the taxi has identifying marks , ie number on the roof , name of driver on dashboard , and report the driver to the regulator ! If somebody tried to rob me I wouldn’t just complain to the journal !

harold go to the uae they own the industry. francis i was stung 3 years ago and have not used them since do you have to insult me to get your point across i am not complaining to the journal simply using a reference to back up a comment or are you just a troll.

Sorry i meant them!

Read the first 2 lines….”no notice”…. you had 30 days notice. Then I got bored.
Never get taxi’s any more as I get sick of listening to their uninformed and uneducated rants.

well Ross if you can show me where my 30 days notice id id be very grateful..if you read on you see why i got no warning or notice..the daa did not issues individual notice…im not a member of a taxi union like the majority of drivers now are not in my opinion there useless so maybe they where informed but not me..i just go to work and get on with it like most people now who still have work to go to..and that’s all most of the fella i know want to do..but if your turned away from your place of work what do you do say.. thanks ill try again tomorrow ???

Your place of work is your car not the Airport, you operate from your car, the Airport is only a pick up/drop off point, if you cant get a space dont buy the permit and go work the streets of Dublin instead, theres many more options for ye to get a fare than there is people who had to take pay cuts or lost a job or list half the wages from hours been taken away, everyone is in the same boat here and we’re all sinking quickly!

i agree there is solutions out here but the daa won’t invest in anything. everything done on the cheap. drivers don’t care what part of the airport we’re in just want to be able to be facilitated if we have permits.

Glen.. The problem here isnt the amount of spaces available, the problem here is that there isnt enough people demanding taxis anymore. if there was a continuos flow of customers then the amount of spaces for collection would be irrelevant. but there isnt so Taxis are needing to hold up the 300 spaces for 1-2 hours sometimes.

DAA should cut the permits back until there is no overflow issue

Of course I wouldn’t be happy if my parking space was taken away without warning. But the fact is they were given a months warning to the change in the overflow parking. In addition there are the same number of parking spaces available as 2010 while at the same time permit holders are 300 less than there were in 2010!

So if the taxi system could cope in 2010 with 300 more permits why can’t they cope now? Give them an inch ‘n they’ll take a mile. As I said on yesterday’s article there is a fine line between protesting for your rights and holding the public to ransom. At that time for me the jury was still out on which side of the line this protested landed. Well it is safe to say they’re 10 miles away from the fine line firmly on the side of holding the public to ransom.

I would love to see more people on bikes, but let’s be real. I can’t see a family of four arriving here on holiday with a load of luggage and getting on their bikes to cycle about 20 miles down a motorway to the city centre.

I was joking of course (hence the :) ).

More seriously, the 7 miles journey ( http://goo.gl/maps/tWSv3 ) can be done easily by Dublin Bus. Line 16 goes to town often for about 20 times cheaper (it takes 20 minutes when the road aren’t busy).
Airlink costs only 6 Euro and it departures every 15 minutes.
Air coaches reach many part of Dublin town for 7-8 Euro and work 24/7 and they’re also frequent.

With all due respect to taxies, they provide a premium service, not something you can’t live without.
So if they don’t want to operate from the airport, so be it.

Will I put my 20 kilo case on my head while I cycle Ffs

Have you taken the time to even read this article or comments. Sticking up for yourself shouldn’t involve holding the public to ransom. This time next week I will have 8 German and French investors visiting our company. We cannot use the taxi drivers at the rank there as our visitors have been so badly ripped of countless times over the last ten years. It’s embarrassing explains how we can’t control these thieves

Ah poor Taxi drivers. They all think they own the roads. Pain in my face listening to them.

No self-employed person gets sick pay or pension unless they set it up themselves.

€1.20 per day to be there, it costs me more to park my car to go do my weekly shopping!

What do you expect, you only need a driving licence and a car to do the job and most of the cars are clapped out bangers

What planet are you on. There was at least a months notice given and the DAA own the land. Next thing you know they will be looking for subsidies like farmers when it’s raining or snowing. Having been left standing around in the cold so many nights waiting for taxis I have little or no time/respect for them. I think this no tipping should be pushed further as there service is so bad

You’re missing the point. There was a months notice over 60 spaces, 130 were taken overnight. Your dislike of taxi drivers doesn’t excuse an overpaid and overstuffed quango it’s incompetence. Not sure what to say about the farmers bit!

1.20 a day to sit in a rank for 3 hours?? they’re insulting their own intelligence. There’s the same amount of spaces now as there was in 2010.

@little Jim
First off all the DAA is not funded by the public purse.In fact it gives back a large percentage of there profits to the government and is self funding.Where are you get the info that Sean Fitzpatrick is on the board of the DAA.I can tell you he is not on the board.So before you start criticizing the DAA get all of your facts correct first.
As for the taxi driver’s dispute the DAA have every right to take away what ever parking spaces they see fit.It’s there’s and the Minster for transport land.

Pagan, the board is full of ex anglo buddies, arthur cox boys, spent politicians you’ve never heard of, “senior” civil servants and trade union patties. Who else would pull a stunt like this with the tall ships in and people back from hols before school starts. Daa is state owned, t2′s budget overran by millions (we picked up the tab so the books were ok) . T2 was also built around a taxi link model so they have to deal with them. Btw I don’t like what the drivers are doing either. I see the figures involved are changing with every announcement. (from both sides.)

He could be a taxi man in Cavan, he chooses to work in Dublin and travel to Dublin because he makes more money there obviously !

Is the Taxi man’s name Ryan Adams ??

And exactly what is stopping him from doing a days work outside the airport???

there isn’t that much taxi business in cavan . .people sitting in and drinking there 75 cents bottles of beer in cavan. . . people have no money they paying the bondholders . . people have to pay more taxes now,

more taxi business in diublin .. .i don’t think so . .ben was on the back of the grafton street rank last night his back wheels were hanging of the rank the gardai came and moved him on . .trying to get a few bob to feed his few kids . . .this what the govt like people fighting people among people . .divide and conquer . ..

Ryan are you drunk or is that you can’t spell ?? What planet are you on ?? Why not tell ‘Ben’ to get a real job. There was a time taxi drivers wore a short and tie and presented themselves in clean car. The last one I had the pleasure of getting wore a Celtic jersey, had a third eyebrow over his lip and drove a sh@& box. Even the Spanish have it right always a white clean taxi and no moaning.

john looks like you can’t spell or you drunk. . .short do you mean shirt get a grip . . and john there are no real jobs at all . . and ben said he would take a real job but there isn’t any jobs at all not evening cleaning toliets . .and ben does have a clean car and is well dressed . .your painting every taxi driver with the same brush you don’t know every taxi driver. .and what planet are you on your a paid troll . .

‘You’re’ is how you spell it Ryan and I hope things work out for gentle ‘Ben’

I am thinking Ryan Adams is joey donnelly in disguise.