Tipperary County Council took in €3.1 million in Parking Fines alone – McGrath
Independent TD Mattie McGrath has described the level of income received by Tipperary County Council in 2015 from Parking Fines/Charges as staggering and in urgent need of explanation. Deputy McGrath was speaking after it was shown by Public Policy.ie that the Council took in €3,122,425 from this one element of its annual income stream:
“On the face of it this is an enormous level of funding to receive from parking fines and associated charges.
My main concern here is that while we need to encourage responsible parking activity, I would hope at the same time that we could do that without pursuing an excessively rigid and penalising parking regime.
Given that over three million euro has been taken in from fines it would seem that the balance between these two goals is being lost and that can easily translate into an anti-business or anti-trade mentality developing.
We need to see some kind of justification for the scale of these fines and an equally clear impact analysis from Tipperary County Council in terms of any negative impact this might be having.
In the run up to Christmas when local businesses are depending on consumer spending we need to address any issues that may exist around the reasons which may be putting people off from shopping in our towns and villages,” concluded Deputy McGrath.
