Two motorists run up parking fines of more than €11,000 each in one local authority area

Ken Foxe

Two motorists have run up parking fines of more than €11,000 each in one local authority area.

Fingal County Council said 10 individuals between them owed it more than €56,000 for unpaid parking tickets.

An anonymised list of the top 10 offenders shows one person has outstanding debts of €11,680 while another has run up fines totalling €11,600.

Motorists running up four figure sums in unpaid parking fines did not only happen in Fingal however, but right across Dublin.

Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council said 10 people owed it sums of between €2,000 and €8,000 in fines.

The single worst offender in that area had unpaid parking tickets worth €7,640 closely followed by another with €7,520.

The council said it had collected a total of €1.16 million in fines last year with a payment rate of 84 per cent.

The rate of fine payment was lower in South Dublin County Council where only 73 per cent of tickets were paid.

That council said the 10 most brazen illegal parkers in its area had accumulated debts of around €42,000.

That included one person who owed €8,827 and another who had amassed tickets with a combined value of €7,245.

South Dublin County Council said it had collected around €361,000 in parking fines last year.

The council said a private contractor looked after all of its parking services, including enforcement.

An information note said: “That contractor employs traffic wardens from Monday to Saturday, 8am to 6pm.

“For the most part, they patrol the pay and display areas in the villages around the county. They issue tickets in relation to illegal and offences contrary to … parking regulations.”

Fingal County Council said that its collection rate for parking fine tickets for last year was 78 percent.

The council said a total of €515,478 was collected from fines in 2024 with pay and display schemes operating in all the main towns in the local authority area.

A note said: “Parking wardens enforce pay parking and other parking regulations in all these areas. This includes identifying and ticketing illegally parked vehicles.

“There are currently [six] parking wardens in total for the county, with [two] parking wardens specifically allocated to patrol non-pay and Display locations for illegally parked vehicles.”

Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council said it did not have a 24/7 countywide parking enforcement service and that it generally operated Monday to Saturday from 8am to 7pm.

The council said no clamping was carried out in their regionm unlike in the Dublin City Council area.

Among the offences targeted by them were non-payment for parking spaces, parking on double-yellow lines or in bus lanes, as well as the abuse of spaces for people with disabilities.