Lack of parking in estates causing 'an awful problem'
Shortages of parking spaces in estates have again been highlighted to Cork County Council, as the difficulty faced by emergency services in accessing some local estates was raised as a matter of concern.
The issue had been raised previously and in the past, pilot schemes took place within the Fermoy MD in which small portions of green areas in estates were converted to accommodate car parking spaces.
Raising the topic at this week's
Northern Committee meeting, Cllr Deirdre O’Brien said that "some of the older estates, they can’t even get their own cars in there, nevermind the emergency services".
“Everybody now has a car or even more than one car and we should be looking at improving access to houses in these estates,” Cllr O’Brien said.
Supporting the call, Cllr William O’Leary noted that in the previous scheme, ‘minimal’ green area was removed to provide additional parking in local estates, as he asked for the scheme to be looked into again for the north Cork area.
'NOT GOING TO GET INVOLVED'
Director of Housing, Maurice Manning, stated that there is no budget available under the housing department to provide for parking spaces within green areas.
“The green space is provided to reflect the needs of individual estates. Car parking is not a matter for the housing directorate,” Mr Manning said.
Cllr Frank Roche also supported the call for additional parking, echoing that there is ‘an awful problem’ with regards to parking in housing estates.
“We’ve got an awful problem in housing estates because we’ve got an awful lot of young people that have a lot of cars."
“The problem at the minute is, one house might be taking up all the car parking and the next house might have elderly people or not as active people who have to park their cars a couple of 100 metres down the street and it’s hard for them to get up and down to their own houses,” Cllr Roche said.
Reiterating, Maurice Manning stated “we are not going to get involved in managing car parking in housing estates.”