Getting a taxi in Dublin might feel a little like Russian roulette these days.
There is bound to be a moment when you have wondered if this is the time you get assigned a taxi in seconds, or if this is the time you'll be waiting for an hour.
This issue is not restricted only to Dublin. Taxi shortages are also felt in areas within the commuter belt of Dublin, as well as places including Cork and Galway.
"Demand for taxis in Dublin today outstrips pre-Covid demand by up to 50% at peak times," said Wendy Thompson, Director of Transport Regulation at the National Transport Authority.
"We’re working with a reduction of about 5.5% for all Dublin drivers."
According to the Department of Transport, almost 1,000 drivers of small public service vehicles - most of which are taxis - ceased operating in the capital in the last three years.
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Vinny Kearns, a founding member of the National Taxi Drivers Union and CEO of NXT taxis, argues the figures are higher.
"I’ve talked to other taxi company owners and all the taxi companies are down on their driver numbers by 30 to 40%."
He said the reason for this difference is because the driver's licence is a five-year licence.
"If you were working in the taxi industry and you renewed your licence in 2020 and you left the trade, your licence is still valid until 2025. So, they’re not going to see in the stats the full picture."
So, where did all these drivers go?
A number of them found alternative employment, said Mr Kearns.
The Covid pandemic, and the numerous lockdowns that came with it, was not kind to the taxi industry.
Not only was it difficult to get by as a taxi driver in a city with empty streets, but this was the time when business was booming for delivery drivers.
Some of the drivers moved to work for courier companies instead, or turned to driving trucks or buses.
Mr Kearns said: "Drivers have seen that when you strip it down and you take your gross earnings and you take the cost of insurance, the cost of running the car, the cost of motor parts - all of which have gone up substantially in the last three years - what they're left with just doesn't make ends meet."
Another reason was the relatively high age demographic of the taxi drivers.
"What happened over Covid was that the people who were retiring, retired," says Noel Ebbs, CEO of Lynk taxis.
"But we had no younger people coming into the industry because everything was shut down. There were no tests, there were no exams, there was nobody processing paperwork or inspecting vehicles."
He estimates that about 2,000 drivers are needed to fix this shortage.
The NTA is taking a number of measures in order to encourage people to join the industry, or to incentivise the 25,000 or more drivers already licensed in Ireland (about 15,000 of them being in Dublin). One of these measures will be increasing the maximum fare from 1 September.
The average increase across all times and distances is about 12%, but the individual fare increases are loaded towards night-time and popular distances.
"For a single passenger at night, it might only equate to a couple of euros or certainly less than half a drink, I suppose," says Ms Thompson, "but for taxi drivers it gives a real incentive to work those peak times with many, many passengers."
