500 new parking spaces are set to be opened, exclusively for hospital staffs

New parking spaces will be made available to the hospital workers in city centers. The hospital staffs were exempted from the parking charges and clamping for the past couple of months.

The Council Chief executive Owen Keegan had previously said that these measures will be discharged at the end of the month. Since March, hospital workers in the capital city have been exempted from paying parking charges as they were using on-street parking.

The Dublin City Council has now made it clear that 500 parking spaces will be made available to the hospital workers with a maximum cos to €5 per space per day.  

The new parking spaces will be in three city center car parks.

The Council has also said that 400 parking spaces will be available in the Ilac car park and the rest 10 spaces will be in the Drury Street and Dawson Street car parks.

These spaces will be available for the hospital workers from next month onwards.

The hospital management and the car park operators will work out for the detailed arrangements for accessing these parking spaces. The council has also said that the new arrangement will be reviewed after six months.

Since March the hospital workers were set free from the council’s parking charges and also from clamping. If the staffs had displayed the ID card copy or a genuine note on hospital or GP practice letter heads in their cars, they were exempted from clamping by the parking enforcement service.

The council took such a step as to stand by the governments decision of assisting the healthcare workers during the corona-virus outbreak.

The free on-street parking service was reviewed and discharged considering the difficulties of the residents living near to the hospitals.

“It has been decided, with considerable regret, that the enforcement concession in respect of HSE staff parking in the vicinity of hospitals cannot be sustained,” The Council Chief executive Owen Keegan said.

He said that the prior decision will be continued till August 31, and after that the new parking spaces will start to function in the nearby localities of the hospitals.

“At the time it was introduced it was not a major issue in the various locations where it applied, as there was limited demand for on-street parking. However, with the resumption in economic activity there has been a significant recovery in traffic volumes and in on-street parking demand,” he said.

Mr Keegan also said that the previous arrangement of on-street parking led to a situation, where the residents with resident’s parking permits were unable to use the parking areas, because those were packed with the vehicles.