When a friend visited Dublin about a year ago, the very first thing he noticed and pointed out to me was the number of taxis in the city. They are absolutely everywhere. Reports at that time had it peg at 25,000 of them servicing Dublin, but as you can see from the taxi identifier number, it wouldn’t be too far off the mark to say there are a lot more of them on the road today.

I am not one who hail taxis on a regular basis, but I have observed something odd recently – there have been a number of taxis of which the driver doesn’t look anything like the person on the displayed licence (a case of bad ID photo?) and at times, I doubt the name is even the driver’s (e.g. very Irish name on display but the driver speaks with a foreign accent). I am quite sure driving taxi with someone else’s licence is not legal.

There have been reports of illegal drivers operating in the city, with a few of them sharing a single taxi/licence by working in shifts. This is dangerous, considering these drivers would most likely be uninsured, have not been vetted by the Garda, and may even be living here illegally and/or owning false driving licences. The crackdown process have been slow, much to the consternation and annoyance of genuine taxi drivers in their city, as their livelihood and their trade are under threat.