David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister back to the House which he shunned. He must be contorted with embarrassment to be here, having campaigned for its abolition.

I welcome the Bill, one I called for five or six years ago in this House. I am glad the Government has caught up with the situation. To take up a point raised by Senator Michael Mullins, I was in St. Vincent's Hospital yesterday for a meeting with consultants about blood tests and so on. There is a five-storey car park there but not a single space was available and I parked in front of a ventilation unit. Somebody who was coming out said I was very courageous to park there and would be clamped. I said, if I am, I will be unclamped pretty bloody quickly. This whole area has become troubled since the abandonment by the city authority in Dublin, and probably in other cities as well, of its own clamping service, the little brownies. They were accepted by people. They were flexible. Now we have a situation where it is franchised out and the profits go to London. That is absolutely ridiculous. I would like to see the re-installation of a clamping service with our own traffic wardens paid by us and the profits coming back to us instead of travelling over to England. It is the same with the bins. They made ducks and drakes out of bins with a Neapolitan Mafia style burning out of others' bin lorries and so on. They are on the streets every single bloody day after 1.30 a.m. That is privatisation. Of course, this is a Fine Gael Minister and so, I suppose, we cannot resist the onward rush of Gadarene capitalism.

I welcome the fact that the Minister is addressing this issue. The idea of harmonisation with so many different entities involved will be a substantially difficult one. The setting of maximum permissible clamp release charges on private lands is excellent but it does go against something the Minister said when he mentioned the difficulty of introducing a statutory licensing regime because it is excessive and too costly to implement. He is setting a maximum and that is good but he is partially involved in intervening there. He said it ended up subsidising an economically unsustainable licensing regime and so on and increasing such charges to offset licensing fees imposed by the State. The private clampers increase their charges. If the Minister is setting a maximum charge they cannot go above the maximum, at least that is as I understand it.

The Minister said something very interesting about disabled people, namely that they can park where they like. I think that is daft. I quote from the Minister's speech where he said: "A vehicle displaying a disabled parking permit will be exempted from being clamped in any place where clamping is specifically legislated for under an enactment." The disabled have a free bill to park anywhere and nobody will do anything about it. I do not agree with that and I have fought for the disabled all my political life.

I do not apologise but I think it important to put this on the record. About five years ago I suffered at the hands of the private clampers on a Sunday. I attended Christ Church Cathedral because it had music by Haydn whereas St. Patrick's had some awful modern squawker, who was not even dead, providing the music. I parked on a derelict site where there was no visible evidence that one would be charged. Eventually when I came back and found that I had been clamped I was hysterical because I had people for lunch and I was up against the clock. When the clampers came out, they pointed out that there was a notice which had been covered up by ivy. This was a derelict site and they wanted €175 which I eventually scraped up. I certainly complained. It had an independent complaints committee, I suppose somebody with a cup of coffee in a back room somewhere off Francis Street. I argued the toss and I got half back. That is completely wrong.

There is also the relocation by time. We have had that in North Great George's Street where cars whisked off Gardiner Street have been dumped in our private residential street. I do not agree with that. Where will they dump the cars they relocate? Why should people have the right to clamp or to tow on private lands? If it is a question of an aggressive invasion it can be done under the laws of trespass. I see no reason to clamp. If one drives into a forest area in the country and parks one's car, one does not expect to come back and find it clamped by some landlord. I am being very parochial. North Great George's Street held the award, the accolade as the most clamped street in Dublin-----