Halt town’s slow death: fix parking

A NUMBER of submissions were received from members of the public regarding the parking bylaws in Wicklow, a recent meeting of Wicklow Municipal District heard.

However, district administrator David Porter said that while the council had received 15 submissions many couldn’t be classed as submissions and largely revolved around the issue of permits.

Cllr Irene Winters said she had received a call that morning from Wicklow Sailing Club who expressed concerns about any changes to the bylaws around the club pointing out that many of its members go out on their boats for days at a time and if parking fees were introduced here it would create problems for them.

Mr Porter said that as far as he could recall there were no changes to the port area.

Cllr John Snell expressed concerns that some residents in areas of Wicklow mightn’t be able to park outside their homes but Mr Porter said that was already the case in some parts of the town.

However, he said that it was not possible legally to enforce residents-only parking.

‘We have to remove residents-only parking’, he said. ‘Because it is not enforceable.’

Cllr Gail Dunne said: ‘In my opinion people should be able to park outside their homes.’

‘It’s not always possible in an urban environment’ said Mr Porter. Concerns were also raised for the members of the Active Retired club at their meeting space and Cllr Snell suggested that the engineers look at the area pointing out it is a raised platform.

It was also suggested in one of the submissions to reduce the cost of parking in the Murrough car park.

Cllr Mary Kavanagh said: ‘We should be trying to do everything we can to bring people into the town. We should reduce the parking prices for the Murrough from €1.20 a day to 50c a day.

‘Our town is slowing dying on its feet. We need to try get things moving again’. she said.

However, the members agreed that the financial implications of reduced parking fees needed to be examined and assessed before any decisions were made.