Fifty parking fines quickly cancelled

March 1988

A conference entitled ‘Nuclear Reactors in the Irish Sea’ that was held in Wexford’s Talbot Hotel produced some fall-out all right - but it was of the municipal type rather than nuclear type, and it related to the town’s new disc parking scheme.

With more than 200 delegates attending the conference from almost 60 different local authorities, bringing an off-season boost to business and tourism earnings for the town, one of the town’s new Traffic Wardens decided to conduct a blitz along the Quays on Saturday, where many of the delegates cars’ were parked – either without the parking discs that are now necessary there, or with discs that expired while the car owners were attending proceedings inside.

It is understood that the Traffic Warden put notices of parking fines on the windscreens of approximately fifty such cars.

However, hardly was the ink dry on the parking fines when news of the blitz reached a senior Borough Council official, who quickly gave the order for the traffic warden to go back to remove the tickets and cancel the fines.

The official would speak only on condition of anonymity this week, but he confirmed the incident occurred as outlined, and remarked that while the Traffic Warden was right in principle to issue the parking fines, ‘some discretion has to be applied,’ particularly in the early days of the new regime and particularly when those in the firing line are visitors to Wexford for such an important event.