Increasing annual parking permit fees in parts of Dublin from €50 to €225 would be “wildly disproportionate” and a “slap in the face to residents”, Dublin city councillors have said.
However, they agreed that some increase in the current permit parking rates, which have remained unchanged for 14 years, was warranted.
Options for developing new parking control bylaws were presented on Wednesday to Dublin City Council’s mobility committee by the head of the traffic and transport department, Brendan O’Brien.
These included bringing the annual charge for people to park on the public road outside their homes more in line with existing pay-and-display on-street parking charges in the city.
RM Block
All residents whose homes are on roads governed by pay-and-display parking pay a flat fee of €50 per year, or €80 for two years. However, non-residents parking in the same street pay meter rates of up to €4 an hour, depending on proximity to the centre.
Mr O’Brien pointed out that permit costs had not increased since 2011, but hourly parking rates had risen by approximately 30 per cent since then, making a permit a “really valuable item” he said.
The advantage for someone with a two-year permit was that “10 hours’ parking [for a meter user] pays for your entire year’s parking”, he said.
[ Council approved residential parking permits for fake flatsOpens in new window ]
Fianna Fáil councillor Keith Connolly said “someone going shopping in the city centre and someone living there 30 years isn’t comparable”. The Social Democrats’ Daniel Ennis said for people in his area of the north inner city who had campaigned for the introduction of parking permits, €225 would be “a slap in the face”.
Labour’s Fiona Connelly said the upper end of the charges proposed was “wildly disproportionate”.
Fine Gael councillor David Coffey said he did not think it was fair to penalise people for living close to the city, but said “the charges probably should be higher than they are now”. He knew of people using the cheap spaces for long-term “storage” of their cars but, he said, “increases should be incremental, year by year, not [done by] waiting 14 years and quadrupling the price”.
Green Party councillors Hazel Chu and Feljin Jose said they would not be in favour of a €225 permit charge but would support modest incremental increases in the costs. Fine Gael’s Patrick Kinsella and Colm O’Rourke also said a modest increase would be acceptable.
Committee chair, the Green Party’s Janet Horner, accepted that increasing parking permit charges was “immensely politically unpopular”, but said “for some people a €50 parking charge is way of reserving a bit of public space that they are making inaccessible to others who might need it more”.
Jason Cullen of the Dublin Commuter Coalition pointed out that a bicycle storage space in a new “bike bunker” costs €100 per year, with one bunker holding six bikes but taking up the same space as a car. He said: “€225 is not an awful lot of money, and €40 is a pittance, compared with €600 for the same space for bikes.”
Mr O’Brien said there seemed to be an acceptance “there should be some increase” and he would return with a further report.
