‘Traditional’ parking fines return to windscreens

Community wardens have reverted to the traditional method of placing fines for parking offences onto the windscreen of vehicles rather than sending them by post.

Galway City Council confirmed that as many as half of all parking fines issued during the height of the Covid-19 Pandemic were sent out in the post.

But the Transport Department at City Hall has confirmed it has reverted to the pre-pandemic practice of affixing Fixed Charge Penalty Notices to the vehicles that are offending.

“The issuing of fixed charge notices by post has now fallen back to approximately 20% of overall notices issued, and that is moving in-line with the pre pandemic percentage of notices that were issued by post at that time,” a City Council spokesperson confirmed.

The move comes in response to pressure from Councillor John Connolly (FF), who had  contacted Chief Executive Brendan McGrath twice in recent months asking for fines issued for traffic offences to revert to the traditional method.

Cllr Connolly said that affixing a fine to the offending vehicle was better than posting fines.

“I believe this to be a preferable method for the alleviation of poor parking which can block clearways or hinder the use of footpaths by pedestrians. In such instances, if the driver of the vehicle is in the car, engagement at that point will obviously encourage the driver to move on there and then.

“The receipt of the fine some 48 hours later while punishing the offending driver won’t have the impact of alleviating the blockage and gives the impression that purpose is to generate revenue rather than ensuring footpaths are clear and all types of vehicles can navigate the space appropriately,” Cllr Connolly said.

The postal method of issuing fines was used by the Council with one in every two fines (52%) issued during Covid-19. Now it is back to one in every five fines issued, the Council said, after a ‘revised risk assessment’ associated with Covid was conducted.