Taxi cartel runs out of roadway

So much for social partnership. It appears these days that everywhere one turns there's another industrial dispute. Without doubt, the highest-profile action has been that taken by the taxi drivers. The trouble with the taxis is trying to find out what really annoys them.

For all the talk about the cost of plates and the investment made in the business, when pressed, they all return to their fears that they will not be able to make a living if more cars are allowed on the road. This has been a constant refrain of this protected lobby since time immemorial. For all that, you can no longer be sure of getting a taxi in the capital even on a Tuesday evening at 9 p.m. - supposedly one of the quiet times in the trade.

If New York and London cabbies can make a living with all the competition around, there is no doubt their Dublin colleagues can, if only they would clean up their act and remember that customers are precisely that and not some inconvenience or a sounding board for any extreme prejudice that comes to mind.

On the subject of cleaning up their act, the taxi lobby might reflect on how quickly and resoundingly it lost public sympathy with its action this week. Never have so few managed so quickly to totally alienate the very group from which they seek support.

Taxi drivers have a right to strike, as has any group of workers, even if it sounds vaguely silly given that they are essentially self-employed. What they have no right to do is cripple traffic along the public highway as they did outside Leinster House, at Dublin Airport and at other locations around the State. They had no right to intimidate and harangue people trying to go about their business. That is lawlessness and the sooner the State finds the bottle to address such actions, the sooner industrial action will regain its validity.