The introduction of parking charges at Castlebar train station caused controversy for the second month in a row at the monthly meeting of Castlebar Town Council. Fine Gael Town Councillor Brendan Heneghan brought to the attention of the elected members representations he had received from a woman whose car was clamped in the car park in the past month. Cllr Heneghan told the meeting: “Last Friday a woman got the train to Dublin and when she came back with her elderly mother she found her car had been clamped. It wasn’t that she was avoiding to pay the parking fee, but rather that she didn’t know there was one. And when she got off the train there waiting for her were what I can only call goons to charge her to get the clamp off. The woman didn’t have any cash on her and had only her Laser card and had to ring her husband to bring in cash to her so she could get the clamp off.”
Cllr Michael Kilcoyne asked town manager Seamus Granahan if he had taken on board his suggestion at the previous meeting to make it a condition of the planning permission for the car park that a number of free car parking spaces be left at the station, to which Mr Granahan replied he had not. Cllr Kilcoyne was disappointed to hear this and told the meeting: “I’m not surprised, because no notice is taken of what we say a lot of the time. CIÉ is using this as a revenue generating exercise. This town should have taken the lead and if they appealed so be it.” Responding to Cllr Kilcoyne’s statement, Mr Granahan explained his reasons for not including Cllr Kilcoyne’s suggestion when approving planning permission. “That was not put in because of legal reasons. It would be the equivalent of a major 20 unit development being given permission and one of the conditions being that one of the units must be rent free.”
Fine Gael Cllr Eugene McCormack told the meeting: “One of the main problems here is that it is very poorly signposted, and the issue is not that the lady wouldn’t pay, it’s that she didn’t know she had to, and that must be addressed first.”
