Desmond is one of a small group of high-profile investors understood to have taken a stake in new taxi company Xpert Taxis. Launched in Dublin last October, Xpert Taxis is the first Irish taxi company to use GPRS positioning technology and was the brainchild of Vincent Kearns, former head of the National Taxi Drivers Union.

Kearns declined to comment on the identity of the investors, other than to say that they are "a number of high-profile Dublin business people". Xpert Taxis was started up with total funding of 3.85m, he said.

Kearns said Xpert Taxis is beating its original business plan, which envisaged moving into Cork, Limerick or Galway next year.

"We are very close to launching in one of those cities already and it may happen by the end of March, " he said.

Xpert Taxis has signed up 227 Dublin taxi drivers, according to Kearns, and the goal is to become the country's biggest taxi company. It is making a major play for the corporate market, and has signed up accounts including the Chief State Solicitor's Office and the NCT. "Our ambition is to have 2,000 taxis operating in Dublin by the end of year three."

Kearns said he spotted an opening in the market because he believed the majority of the public had no affinity to any taxi company. "You can't get through to a taxi company, there is no information on when your taxi will arrive.

People, especially women, had safety concerns, with allegations of attacks at night."

Xpert Taxis has outsourced call centre services to Conduit. The GPRS system enables controllers to tell customers where their taxi is.

And taxis affiliated to the company have cameras installed so that both driver and passenger can be monitored. Both the dispatching software and cameras were sourced from Finnish companies.

Another problem Kearns identified was that customers had no option on how to pay fares.

"They were getting into taxis and if they didn't have the cash they were humped."

Xpert Taxis provides chip and pin payment terminals.