TAXI drivers were given leave in the High Court yesterday to seek to have quashed decisions of Dublin City Council to grant an additional 200 wheelchair accessible taxi licences and to alter the boundary of the Dublin taxi meter area.
Mr Justice Geoghegan gave leave to seek a judicial review of the decision of Dublin City Council.
In an affidavit, Mr John Ussher, taxi licence holder, said he was making it on behalf of the Irish Taxi Drivers' Federation, the Dublin Area Taxi Association and the National Taxi Drivers' Union.
Mr Ussher, the federation's president, said that an increase in the number of taxi or wheelchair accessible taxi licences which failed properly to take into account the size of the customer base would seriously undermine the value of the licence and the taxi drivers ability to earn an income.
The Dublin City Council, on April 7th last, decided to issue 200 additional wheelchair accessible licences, at a cost of £15,000 each, and to alter the boundary of the Dublin taxi meter area from its present 15 mile radius from the GPO to include the areas of Dublin Corporation and Fingal, South Dublin and Dun Laoghaire Rathdown county councils.
It also decided to increase the biannual renewal fee for taxi licences to £450 and to order that an independent review of the requirements of the new Dublin taxi meter area be carried out and a report submitted to the consultative body on taxis and hackneys.
Mr Ussher said that in making these decisions the council had failed to comply with the Road Traffic Regulations in that it had failed to give any proper consideration to representations made to it. To decide to issue further licences was fundamentally at variance with reason and common sense, was indefensible and amounted to a breach of its obligations to existing licence holders.