Taxi drivers vote to strike during Ryder Cup

The work stoppage is scheduled to coincide with the Ryder Cup, which will be held in The K Club in Co Kildare, next month.

The dispute centres around a new national fare structure, which was signed into law earlier this month, and will be in place from September 25th.

Minimum charges will be set at €3.80, or €4.10 at premium time, replacing the system where fares were set by individual local authorities.

The new structure also sees the abolition of luggage charges and a €1.50 hiring charge for picking up passengers from Dublin airport. The unions claim the changes will have a devastating impact on drivers' incomes.

The work stoppage was agreed by a meeting of up to 1,000 drivers at the National Stadium last night but still has to be ratified by the executive of the three main taxi unions.

Drivers are also refusing to pay Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) a €500 fee to use the airport taxi rank.

Tommy Gorman, president of the National Taxi Drivers Union, said there would be disruption during the international golf tournament at the K Club in Co Kildare after up to 1,000 taxi drivers in Dublin voted to strike.

Minister for Sports and Tourism John O'Donoghue said industrial action could be extremely damaging to the country.

But the unanimous decision at last night's meeting is likely to be ratified by the executives of the three main taxi unions within the next 48 hours.

Mr Gorman said drivers were angrily opposed to new proposals to overhaul the industry put forward by regulator Mr Deering.

"There certainly will be some upsetting of the Ryder Cup, we have a mandate for that now from that meeting and obviously we'll have to act on it," he said.

"I hear that John O'Donoghue, the Minister for Sport and Tourism, is concerned about it. He certainly would want to talk to some of his constituents in Tralee and Killarney and look at their position and look at what they've been left with as a result of this new regulation coming in."

Drivers currently pay the DAA 70 cent per trip to pick up passengers from the airport and this is balanced against the €1.50 charged to passengers.

The Taxi Drivers' Federation, the National Taxi Drivers Union and Siptu claim that drivers face losses of €4,500 per year when the new fares are introduced in September.

Opposition is strongest in Dublin over the scrapping of the luggage charges and the special fee for pick-ups at Dublin airport.

Taxi drivers staged two 24-hour stoppages over the past four weeks as part of a campaign against the new arrangements.

The Ryder Cup is expected to attract tens of thousands of visitors each day of the tournament, which pitches the leading golfers from Europe against their IS counterparts, at the K Club in Co Kildare, some 18 miles from Dublin, from September 22nd to 24th.