The mayor of Mullingar is calling for a parking permit to be made available to workers who call to local businesses on a regular basis.
Cllr Pat Collins feels that maintenance personnel should be able to purchase a yearly permit to allow them to park on the street near the business they are visiting.
“Service engineers, for example, don’t know if they are going to be working for 10 minutes or an hour and a half, and car parks are not much good to them. The difficulty they have is they are running back and forth to the van as they don’t know how long a job will take. I would ask the council to come up with a system for some kind of permit,” he said.
However the council senior executive officer Declan Leonard pointed out that introducing a policy to cater for maintenance personnel would necessitate a change in the parking bylaws.
“”I would be reluctant as it may be too open-ended. There is already 15 minutes grace for on-street parking. If people park for two hours and pay €2 it is not much, I’m not aware of any town where there is free parking.”
The current parking bylaws allow for annual and monthly employee permits in designated car parks at a fee of €200 per annum or €25 per month respectively.
“In certain circumstances, temporary permits can be availed of for, say, contractors who may be renovating an on-street premises with no alternative parking and these are dealt with on an individual basis by the Mullingar Area Office,” he added
