Dún Laoghaire Rathdown county manager Owen Keegan was unaware of delays in gathering material to pursue parking fines through the courts when he advised councillors that clamping would be the best course of action against offenders, according to a statement he issued to councillors yesterday.
The statement was issued following an article in The Irish Times in which the Courts Service said it had allocated enough court time for the council to deal with 1,000 summonses for parking fines in 2006.
The Courts Service said it had allocated time in June, October and December to the council but only eight summonses were processed in the June session.
Yesterday's statement said that in Mr Keegan's report to councillors on December 11th, he had not intended to convey that the council had failed to get any court time, but that it was unable to get sufficient court time to pursue the 15,900 motorists with unpaid parking tickets on an annual basis.
"This is and remains the position," it said.
The statement also said that the private solicitor, appointed to undertake parking fine work, advised the council that only a limited number of "test" cases should be taken in June.
"After the June hearing arrangements were then made to pursue a substantial number of cases on the October date," the statement said.
"However, problems arose in getting the material ready for these cases to be heard on the particular date and a decision was made to postpone the hearing until December.
"The manager was not aware that this difficulty had arisen when he prepared his report to council in late November/early December." The statement added that the council had recently strengthened its legal team to vigorously enforce payment of these fines.
