No cash to tackle off-street parking in Headford

There’s no money in Galway County Council’s coffers to provide off-street parking for Headford – because it would also necessitate a traffic management plan for the town.

At the same time, a meeting of Tuam Municipal District heard this week that the town might perish unless off-street parking was addressed – and local Councillor, Andrew Reddington made a heart-felt plea to Council executives to try and find the means to tackle what he described as ‘the biggest issue in Headford’.

Traffic jams are a regular occurrence at peak hours, especially now schools are back and the lack of off-street parking means the town centre is dying on its feet.

Cllr Reddington, who has been flagging this for months, vowed he would keep campaigning for this for the five years of his term if it wasn’t seen to.

“I don’t want this kicked down the road. There must be some way of providing off-street parking so that people don’t have to park on both sides of the road, causing traffic problems,” he said.

Committee Cathaoirleach, Cllr Mary Hoade agreed that it was certainly an issue in the town and she too said she was worried that the centre of town would die away if the Council didn’t support this.

She said a number of local businesses were struggling and there had been traffic chaos since schools re-opened.

Damien Mitchell, Senior Engineer told the meeting that the Council wasn’t in a position to provide this and he too was disappointed that the lands for the off-street car park hadn’t materialised.

Cllr Reddington said that was not good enough and he reminded the meeting that businesses in the centre of Headford paid the same rates and taxes as everyone else.

“Our biggest issue is that an accident will happen. It needs to be sorted. Could it not be a priority for the 2020 Budget?” he asked.

Mr Mitchell said there had been a lot of work done on investigating lands for off-street parking but the Council currently didn’t have any funds to acquire lands or to provide a traffic management plan.

Director of Services, Jim Cullen told the meeting he would be willing to meet with local people who would share information so that the Council could engage to make it a meaningful proposal.