Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is looking at clamping purely from a Dublin City Council perspective because it is the only local authority that operates clamping. All the others are private clampers. Clamping has been outlawed in England, Scotland and Wales and the world has not fallen in on top of them. In fact, they regulate parking in a coherent way, which is clear if one visits any of those three places. The Minister talked about Blanchardstown hospital. For the life of me I cannot figure out how the Minister can stand up here and make that silly argument about parking there and going up to the National Sports Campus. Blanchardstown it is not an area I know extraordinarily well, but I do know it. The Blanchardstown Centre has thousands of free car parking spaces with buses coming in and out of it. Why would one park in the hospital grounds? I cannot see any logic in what the Minister is talking about in that regard. It just does not stack up.

There is a need for a parking policy that is coherent. The lack of such a policy is having a negative impact on businesses in town centres and villages by virtue of the fact that it is difficult to figure out exactly what the regime is. In my area of Celbridge there are four different arrangements. There is the local authority and three different companies which charge three different amounts. What is the public supposed to think? Is it supposed to read the bylaws and every sign before parking their car? That is the kind of thing that puts people off. They come back and find they have to pay between €80 and €120. The Bill will take the worst excesses away, and there are positives in it from that point of view, but it is lacking in ambition in terms of what is needed. We have to ask why this is only thing the Bill set out to do when there is so much more needed that can be done.

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