A New York cab driver is spending €700 to fly 3,000 miles to Dublin for two pints of Guinness that he was promised for an unpaid fare.
Fun-loving cabbie John McDonagh happily accepted an IOU in 2013 when Dublin man Shane Gaffney, 32, could not pay up. Shane told Dublin Live: “I was a student, over in America on a J1 visa, working in a golf club in Connecticut and on a night out in New York.
“My credit card didn’t work in the taxi and I had no cash, so I told him that we have a family pub in Dublin and asked if he would take an IOU. I remember writing it and the legend accepted it.
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"But I heard no more about it and I hadn’t spoken to the taxi driver since – until I got a message from him recently on Instagram.” Shane, who now works in e-commerce, added: “I’ve joked with John that I’ll now have to give him three pints, instead of two, due to inflation.
“I was only 23 at the time and on a summer J1 visa between my third and fourth year at college. It was great craic. Fair play to John.”
Shane’s dad Paul, 66, said: “Shane’s a character.” Yellow cab driver John McDonagh, whose parents came from Donegal, has been a taxi driver for 40 years.
He is now due to collect his pints of Guinness at Shane’s dad’s family pub Gaffney and Sons in Fairview next Tuesday. The cabbie said: “These two free pints of Guinness will cost me $350 each [€713] as I am taking Aer Lingus to get them.”
John, who grew up in New York borough Queens, added: “We worked out in 2013 what the ratio is between the dollar and the euro and found that Shane owed me two pints of Guinness.
“And then I made him sign a contract, which is the IOU.” He is also set to perform the one-man play of his life, Off the Meter, On the Record, at the Sean O’Casey Theatre in Dublin’s East Wall next Thursday and Friday after he lands.
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