Pay parking on cards for Wexford Hospital

January 1995

People visiting of attending clinics at Wexford General Hospital may soon have to pay the South Eastern Health Board to use the public car park at the front of the building.

The Health Board says the drastic measure would be for ‘ traffic management purposes only’, and would not be introduced simply as a way to gain extra revenue.

Pat McLoughlin, General Hospitals Programme Manager with the Board, admitted this week that the number of car parking spaces provided at the hospital is totally inadequate to deal with the demand.

‘We may have to consider pay parking, from a traffic management point of view. I want to emphasise it would not be just for extra revenue. We haven’t got any proposals at the moment, but down the road, we may need it,’ he said.

He added that people ‘always want to park right at the front door’, and this habit causes considerable congestion around the front of the hospital.

‘What we might consider is having pay parking for spaces closest to the hospital, while the ones further away would remain free,’ he added. He pointed out too that some other hospitals already operate pay parking, but accepted that these are mainly in Dublin.

He said another problem is with hospital staff using the public car park instead of the staff car park that was provided at the rear of the hospital last year, because the public car park ‘is that bit closer’.

‘We installed a security barrier for which staff members have a key, but there are still 30 or 40 staff who park in the public car park instead. If they stopped doing so, it would help solve the problem,’ he said.