Wheelchair friendly taxis penalised
``Nothing is a better indication of this government's approach to equality than their treatment of disabled people,'' says Mark Crosbie, a taxi driver from Cabra. He is instantly likeable, full of enthusiasm, the type of guy you know if you fell down in the street would be there to pick you up. Mark drives a wheelchair accessible taxi.
``My father is disabled, so I know what it is like,'' he says. ``As a disabled person you live within a culture which sees you as sub-normal, unequal. Society finds it easier to keep you in an institution, out of the way. Society is full of pity and charity for the disabled, but it refuses to recognise disabled people as human beings, with rights to live their lives, or to take decisions. The state has an obligation to respect the rights of disabled people. It doesn't.''
``Imagine being in a wheelchair, wanting to get into town to visit a friend. You are waiting in the cold at the bus stop, but no wheelchair accessible bus comes along. Your mobile breaks down. You need a taxi. There is no wheelchair accessible taxi. You are stuck, powerless, with no way to get home.''
Problems in Ballymun too
Sinn Féin Councillor Dessie Ellis recently raised the issue in the Corporation area committee dealing with Ballymun. ``The disabled people, people who are sight impaired, or find walking difficult, are suffering as Ballymun Regeneration begins its project of tearing down the buildings and pulling up the roads. Footpaths suddenly aren't there and accessibility to streets or buildings disappears.
``I raised the issue of wheelchair accessible buses with the Dublin Transport Authority,'' sayd Ellis. ``They could not guarantee even one regular wheelchair accessible bus on our bus route into town.'' The disabled are left to taxi transport''. And there is the rub. Because, as Mark Crosbie points out, there won't be any wheelchair accessible taxis if the government doesn't change its policy:
``The problem is that following deregulation of taxies, you can now buy a taxi plate for £5,000 and you can get a suitable car to taxi with for a thousand or two. When we bought our plates, they cost £15,000, when the taxi market was restricted. A wheelchair friendly modified taxi costs £25,000 to £35,000.
So now we few taxi drivers who drive wheelchair accessible taxis have huge weekly outgoings to meet this debt. I need to earn £800 a week before I even start to earn an income. I have to work a six and a half day week, 12 hours a day, with no sick pay or holiday pay or pension at the end of it all.
``The result is that no one can afford any longer to drive a wheelchair accessible taxi. Mark has been campaigning for the abolition of Vehicle Registration Tax on wheelchair modified taxis, reimbursement of drivers to ease their huge debt repayments, and for it to become compulsory that all new taxi licences coming on stream be for wheelchair compliant taxis.
So far, he has met a blank wall from Minister Bobby Molloy. On 30 January, Molloy announced in the Dáil that he has no such plans to facilitate the wheelchair friendly taxi operators. ``It's the dog eat dog of competition, and the devil take the hindmost,'' says Crosbie. ``This just happens to be the disabled people, but they have few votes between them, so Molloy ignores them.''
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Amazing court decision over taxi deregulation
Last Friday, Justice Carney in the High Court gave judgement on the taxi operators' claim for compensation following government deregulation of the taxi business.
It was an amazing ruling. Carney said that whatever the assurances taxi drivers might have been given by senior ministers, they could never have been regarded as anything but conditional. So much for ministerial promises.
Then the judge awarded taxi operators half their legal costs, subject to the amazing condition that they did not go on strike for 21 days. In effect, Justice Carney, without any apparent legal basis, used a judicial issue on the awarding of costs as a threat over the taxi operators not to pursue what many would regard as their just claim for compensation.
The taximen had paid big money for their plates. At the end of last year, the government decided to legislate to deregulate the market. The assets they held fell in value from some £75,000 to £5,000, but the government refused to compensate. ``It's like you buy a shop, or a business, and suddenly, even though you are still paying the mortgage, the government renders the property unsaleable and valueless,'' taxi operator Mark Crosbie explains.
Resort to the High Court was part of the agreement the taxi operators reached to withdraw from strike action last December, when government was anxious to get taxis back on the road.
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