A local activist is calling on the town council to address issues at a North Tipp car park.
Tommy Barrett says the barriers at Slievenamon Road carpark in Thurles, which opened in 2020, are no longer operational after issues with them forced people to complain.
He says such issues included the failure of the barriers to open for drivers with tickets, causing delays of over an hour for people and causing many to miss important appointments.
Tommy told Tipp FM that if the barriers aren’t in use, it is a waste of tax payer money:
“My major concern now is that these systems take a lot of money and finance to put in place, and I want to know, and I think the people of Thurles deserve to know, will this barrier no longer be in place? And, if it’s not, will the council recuperate the money that was spent on it? ”
Tommy says the funds allocated for the barrier system introduced in Thurles at the Slievenamon Carpark in 2020 should be used for something else if the barriers remain up.
He claims that people who had paid their parking fees were caught in time delays when the barriers failed to function, that this was causing a lot of frustration for Thurles residents, and that the council need to address the issue.
“It was a new system in Thurles, whereby you have barriers on a car park, and I know that this has caused a lot of inconvenience for people because people will go in, and they’d have their ticket, and the barriers would not open. I know there was some people there waiting for over an hour, over an hour and a half at times, for this, and I know some people were very angry. They had missed important hospital appointments and things like that. It cost over €10,000 and for the forseeable future the council aren’t operating them, they’re not using them at all because of all the complaints they were getting. My question is, would that result in a waste of money that could’ve been spent somewhere else in the town? ”
