“It just happened that way?”

This is the transcript of a telephone call I just made  to A2Z Taxi:
[I should note that I did not have an opportunity to identify myself as a journalist during the call.]

“Hello, A2Z taxi.”

“Can I speak to the manager there?”

“He’s not here right now, you’ll have to ring back between the hours of 9am and 3pm.”

“Can I ask a question then?”

“You can.”

“There’s a twitter account for A2Z Taxis…”

“There is.”

“It has just tweeted “has only IRISH drivers.” Is that a hiring policy?”

“Is that a  hiring policy?”

“Yes.”

“Well they’re all self-employed. It’s their choice to work for us. All taxi drivers are self employed, we just charge them a fee to use our work.”

“So why are there no non-Irish self-employed taxi drivers with A2Z…”

“It’s not a company policy, we just don’t have any.”

“It just happened that way?”

“Yeah.”

[UPDATE 1: An article on this phone call over at Newswhip.ie has led to some comments, including the observation that A2ZZ Taxi may have Irish-Asian-Irish or African-Irish drivers on their books. Please feel free to call them at the number they kindly provided in the tweet below (it’s a Dublin number, so there’s an 01 prefix if you’re calling from outside the capital) and drop me (or Newswhip) a comment letting us know what you found out.]

[UPDATE 2: I contacted the Equality Authority to ask if equality legislation covered a situation where taxi drivers are not employed by a company, but have paid a registration fee. Unfortunately, my call was placed just before 5pm as the Equality Authority was closing, but they have promised to get back to me in the morning.]

[UPDATE 3: I’ve written a new post The A to Z bringing this story up to date.]