Chamber outrage at parking ticket notices
THE outgoing President of County Wexford Chamber of Commerce has criticised a decision by Wexford County Council to direct traffic wardens to issue ‘ red card’ parking fine notices last week on vehicles in New Ross, alerting drivers that paid parking was returning on Monday.
Sean Reidy said: ‘I find it incomprehensible that shoppers in town would be issued with notices that they are in contravention of parking regulations when it has been announced there is free parking at the moment. This was not a great welcome at a time traders are on their knees trying to get back up and running.’
Mr Reidy said: ‘With the loss of revenue that traders have experienced we need to be doing everything to encourage trade back into town, not issuing what looks like “red cards”. The optics of it are terrible. You park your car in the knowledge that it’s free and then you get a notice that you are in contravention of regulations. I don’t know what it is trying to justify, but it is disappointing and discouraging from a public relations point of view.’
Mr Reidy said downtown traders have suffered a hammer blow this year with the increase in online shopping, their temporary closure and the footfall limitations of social distancing. ‘ They need so much encouragement and real financial assistance and all the help they can be given. A very liberal well planned and generous parking regime is needed for the foreseeable future,’ Mr Reidy added.
Traffic wardens were stood down in late March after Taoiseach Leo Varadkar instructed local authorities to ensure
Sean Reidy.
frontline workers, including shopkeepers, were not to pay parking charges. Director of Services for Roads and New Ross District Director Eamonn Hore said: ‘A lot of councils just took away the traffic wardens. There are issues with parking in the town and people can’t get spaces because every space is taken up close to shops. Rather than come in with a heavy-fisted approach – putting tickets on cars this Monday – the notices are more a reminder. Imagine the uproar if we just came back.’
Mr Hore said parking charges were re-introduced in Cork in early June and Kilkenny in the middle of the month. ‘They went down the same route with notices on vehicles in the week beforehand,’ Mr Hore said.
A Wexford County Council spokesperson said: ‘It’s important to say at the outset that Wexford’s parking bye-laws were never suspended. Instead, we took the decision simply not to enforce parking offences over the last number of months – including the offence of failure to purchase and display a parking ticket. That period of non-enforcement is now approaching an end and, with effect from June 29 parking enforcement will again apply and a vehicle found without a valid parking ticket is to be issued with a fine. Members of the public have enjoyed free parking for many weeks, and despite our best efforts they may not yet know that enforcement is being reintroduced. The purpose of the warning notice (which applies in all of the four main towns) is to remind the public of the approaching end of the non-enforcement period. It is a simple and effective way of offering the public fair and final warning of the impending change and of the reintroduction of parking enforcement.’
A dedicated system to ensure homeless people within our community are looked after properly is needed, the most recent meeting of New Ross Municipal District was told.
Cllr Michael Sheehan outlined the case of a man who was living homeless in Pearse Park this month.
He said emergency housing needs to be made available for people who find themselves homeless.
A woman facing a public order summons was ‘ terribly embarrassed’ about the matter, her solicitor told the District Court.
Lana Doherty was representing Natasha English (42), Bealistown, Ballycullane, in the wake of her arrest at Bealistown on August 16 last year.
Garda John Paul Scallan told how he arrived to find her unsteady on her feet and a danger to herself, prompting him to arrest her for her own safety.
Ms English was allowed the benefit of the Probation Act.