Ombudsman probes ‘unfair’ city parking fines policy

The Ombudsman is investigating claims of discriminatory enforcement of parking bye-laws in the city.

The Office of the Ombudsman has confirmed it is investigating a complaint of unfair treatment against Galway City Council in relation to issuing fixed charge notices for illegal parking.

The complaint, which was revealed in the Galway City Tribune last month, relates to allegations that a Galway city councillor, and two members of Galway City Partnership, whose directors include officials and elected members of the Council, received ‘special treatment’ and avoided a fine for parking without a pay and display permit.

An ‘ordinary’ motorist who parked beside them, also without a pay and display permit, received a parking ticket.

The Galway City man claims that three other cars parked beside him, near Bohermore, did not get penalised even though didn’t have pay and display tickets either.

“I parked in a Pay and Display area immediately adjacent to three other vehicles. None of these, including mine, had displayed a valid parking disc. When I returned, mine was the only vehicle to have received a Fixed Charge Notice.

“Of the other three cars, one belonged to a city councillor and had a City Hall parking permit displayed. The other two had notes on the dashboards stating that the owners worked in Galway City Partnership,” the motorist said.

He said the law was not applied fairly or systematically, and that it amounted to discrimination. The motorist appealed the parking ticket but the Council upheld the fixed charge notice and said it was applied fairly.

The motorist said he had no issue with paying the fine but considered it would be “immoral to reward corrupt practice by complying with a law that has been applied in a discriminate and inequitable manner”.

In a letter to Chief Executive of the Council, Brendan McGrath, he suggested a €40 payment to charity in lieu of the fixed charge notice.

The motorist claims he was ignored by Mr McGrath and so wrote to the Ombudsman to complain. Recounting the events, he claimed it “constitutes discriminatory enforcement of parking bye-laws affording preferential treatment to a certain class of officials and representatives.”

The Ombudsman complaint added: “This has the potential to undermine confidence in parking enforcement by the local authority, damage the integrity of the system, and ultimately impact on the level of compliance amongst the public.”

He has asked the Ombudsman to “review parking enforcement practices in order to ensure that no such discriminatory treatment occurs again and examine the feasibility of issuing Fixed Charge Notices to the offending vehicles mentioned in the complaint”.