Galway's taxi drivers held crisis talks last night to discuss the overpopulation of the taxi industry in the city and the lack of designated parking bays.

The meeting, which took place at the Menlo Park Hotel, follows a heated discussion regarding conditions for drivers in the city at a special sitting of Galway City Council on Monday where Cllr Padraig Conneely urged the Taxi Regulator to "call a halt" to the issuing of licences in the region pending review.

With the number of taxis in the city increasing from 148 to over 1,000 since deregulation was introduced, the local taxi industry was deemed to have "gone beyond a joke" by Cllr Michael Crowe, who said a lack of local knowledge and a number of uninsured drivers had turned the whole system "upside down".

Mayor Tom Costello agreed with claims that the industry was in crisis, and blamed the Department of Transport for causing the current situation by introducing deregulation before thinking of the consequences. It was then agreed to put forward a request to the taxi regulator to suspend the issuing of licenses in the city, pending the review of the current parking conditions in the city. The possible introduction of a ban has previously been welcomed by Des O Dowd of the Rural Taxi Alliance who said that the overpopulation of drivers was making it harder for people to earn a living.

"I would definitely be in favour of bringing in a ban on licences in Galway because at the moment it is hard to make a living. People are driving three or four days a week and working somewhere else for the rest of the time. To say that drivers are frustrated would be an understatement; if this continues there is definitely going to be trouble.

"We are also very dissatisfied with the way that the city council are dealing with taxi drivers in the city. There is a huge amount of cars and no space to park them. It was very bad before but now after the Eyre Square development, it is a helluva lot worse. The whole situation is a shambles and an accident waiting to happen," he concluded.

Comments (1) »

full-time dublin taxi driver
written by derek corrigan, September 25, 2008

I would be very interested to know if the situation has improved in any way for the Galway drivers since their meeting in February??Dublin is worse than ever. HELP!!

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