Out-of-hours patrol sought over parking issues on busy Cork city street

ALMOST a quarter of the more than 300 parking fines issued in the MacCurtain St area since the start of the year have been issued to motorists parking on footpaths.

According to the figures which were issued to Green Party councillor Oliver Moran by Cork City Council, of the 309 parking fines issued to date in the MacCurtain St area, 68 were for cars illegally parked on footpaths.

59 were issued for parking at a prohibited time, while 51 were for parking in a loading bay. Failure to display a valid parking disk resulted in 48 fines and 44 were for failure to display a current motor tax disk .

Mr Moran said: “The new public realm investment on MacCurtain St will improve the attractiveness of the area to visit. The residents and traders of the area have a great plan for investing in it.

“Unfortunately, that’s being eaten away at by illegal parking, something people have been complaining about.

“It’s not surprising that the largest number of fines issued is for parking on footpaths.

“Even as the project is being worked on, motorists are squeezing onto footpaths and holding up traffic in bus stops.”

One of the issues contributing to the annoyance is the lack of a traffic warden service beyond daytime hours, Monday to Saturday, and the Green Party is currently negotiating to secure an out-of- hours traffic warden patrol in the city centre as part of the city’s budget for 2024.

“The gardaí have been very helpful in responding and doing out-of-hours operations, especially for blocking footpaths at night-time, but they would prefer the city to take over.

“Currently, wardens work daytime hours Monday to Saturday. For an area like MacCurtain St, which is a nighttime destination, patrolling the streets out-of-hours will be key to delivering for the area.”