DAA responds to claims of long wait for taxis at Dublin Airport

DAA, the operator of Dublin Airport, has said it is “actively monitoring” taxi driver activity after passengers said that there are few taxis operating in the early hours of the morning. 

The issue relates to pick-ups at the official rank at the airport, but taxis are available from ride-sharing apps such as FreeNow.

“There were no taxis. In the 15 minutes we waited, one arrived,” according to one customer interviewed by the Irish Independent.

“However there were 30 taxis available via the FreeNow app at the same time. They were accessible by walking a few hundred metres to the car park, where there was no wait time.”

The crux of the issue relates to the fact that only airport-permitted taxis can access the rank, while online taxi services are only permitted by the DAA to use the car park and not the official rank.

A spokesperson for DAA said “some passengers will occasionally face queues for a very short period late at night when there is extremely high demand across Dublin city for taxis, especially if there are major sporting or concert events happening.”

“The Dublin Airport team always acts quickly, issuing telephone calls to encourage additional taxis to come to the airport, which helps clear the queues quickly.”

DAA claims that in the past month, 9 out of 10 passengers queuing for a taxi at the airport waited 10 minutes or less at the taxi rank, while the average waiting time was less than 5 minutes.

“That’s down from less than 8 minutes this time last year,” the spokesman noted.

“The DAA is working hard to reduce wait times even further for passengers. We have recently issued an additional 300 new permits to bring to over 2,000 the number of permits in operation at Dublin Airport.”

The issue of hailing a cab in the early hours of the morning has plagued Dublin since the pandemic, with an RTÉ Investigates segment from June 2022 showing that a significant amount of taxi drivers retired from the taxi driving ranks during the Covid-19 pandemic, dropping from 22,000 in 2019 to 19,350 last year.

The high cost of fuel that stemmed from the Russian-Ukranian war was also a factor in drivers leaving the industry.

An Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he would look to introduce deregulation measures to help attract drivers into the industry in summer of 2022, but the plans have not come to fruition.

Fine Gael TD Emer Higgins told Newstalk in May that a quicker turnaround time in issuing taxi licenses may help ease the shortage, but the National Private Hire and Taxi Association said that “dumbing down” the process was not a solution.