24 May 2003: Naas Councillors have rejected plans to allow a temporary car park at the lakes area of the town for use by Naas General Hospital.
The majority decision of 8-1 met with loud applause from the public gallery at a recent Town Council meeting.
The plan for the ‘temporary’ car park was put forward by Council officials and management of Naas General Hospital and the site had been agreed by the Gardai from a safety point of view.
The meeting was attended by John Browner, Project Manager of the South West Area Health Board (SWHAB) and by Hospital Manager Michael Knowles who had provided a detailed report - which councillors had only received the previous evening - outlined the various car parking spaces available during the various stages of development of the hospital until 2006.
The consultants’ report was in response to a request for additional information. However, it was described by Mayor Timmy Conway as ‘confusing’. He asked the two hospital representatives for ‘the bare facts’.
It stated that up to 110 car park spaces would be needed at any time during work at the hospital and this will not be resolved until Kildare County Council moves out of its nearby St Mary’s HQ and the whole area becomes one hospital campus.
As each councillor stated their opposition to the proposal, local residents in the packed gallery showed their appreciation. Until it came to Cllr Seamie Moore who stuck to his belief that a temporary car park was the way to go despite being at odds with his neighbours on the issue.
There was concern that the hospital is now seeking 1.75 parking spaces per hospital bed and not the 1.5 previously agreed. This, the hospital people said, was based on a survey of hospitals in the Greater Dublin Area.
“It’s from now on rather than from December we’re saying there is a shortfall on the grounds and if an off-site car park was made available it would be availed of by the hospital staff,” Mr Browner said. He said the worst case scenario was that from the end of this year or early 2004, they will be down 27 spaces equalling a shortfall of up to 90 spaces at that particular time.
At this stage the Mayor asked both men to ‘stick to numbers’. “Your total requirement for visitors and staff is 80-100?” he asked. They agreed this was so.
Mr Knowles added that from ‘feed back’ a temporary car park at the lakes would be used on the basis of its closeness to the hospital. He said the car park committee, which represents all the staff, met with all heads of departments ‘and the view from the committee and staff is that they would welcome it with enthusiasm and would see it being used to its maximum capacity’.
This statement was met with scepticism by councillors.
Cllr Pat O’Reilly (FG) believed that 100 car parking spaces in a temporary car park ‘would want to be retained’. He would not support a lakeside car park for the hospital. He said the Ballymore Road road is exceptionally busy.
Cllr Charlie Byrne (FF) said both men had ‘done a good sales job’. But he slammed the hospital management for not doing their job properly in the first place by providing sufficient car parking in the hospital grounds. “If this was done at the time, we wouldn’t be sitting here tonight trying to rectify these mistakes’.
He also took them to task for claiming to have the support of staff on the issue. “I was informed that there wasn’t even a notice on the notice board about it!” he told them. “How can you assure us when you could not assure us that your staff would park in Ballycane Church car park even with a shuttle bus provided - which is almost as near to the hospital as the proposed lakes site?”
You couldn’t even get them on the bus!” he admonished.
Cllr Byrne asked Town Council officials if his notice of motion to have the area turned into a wildlife amenity (passed by the Councillors) is a legal document or not, and demanded to know why it was left off the progress report.
He asked Councillors to be ‘very careful’ as the lakes area is zoned amenity/open space and the matrix specifically prohibits a car park. He said plans should have included a multi storey car park within the hospital grounds ‘from the start’.
“The people of this town want to remind you that no car parking outside the walls of the hospital will be acceptable to anyone,” he stated. He added that the money the Hospital wanted to put into a temporary car park at the lakes ‘would put a good deposit on a multi storey car park in the hospital’.
A Hospital nurse had told him she was not prepared to arrive for work 10 mins early to park away from the hospital and have to walk to work.
“It would be illegal to put a car park at the lakes,” he said, advising councillors to vote against the proposal ‘because there will be an uprising by local people against it.”
To the two hospital management representatives he added: “All because of the disastrous mistake that there were no parking facilities planned at the hospital you were in command of!”
Next to speak was Cllr Anthony Egan (Naas Planning Alliance) who said he had stayed up till 1am that morning reading the report as he wanted to make the right decision. He too called the document ‘totally confusing’.
He said time limits on car parking along nearby roads ‘will only increase the capacity on the road threefold’. “We want to accelerate people going to the hospital ... not all-day parkers.”
Cllr Egan said the Hospital’s assessment of need report did not include construction workers who take up a substantial amount of parking spaces. He said these workers should be made park in Ballycane and that time restrictions should be in place on the Ballymore Road. He finished by stating the worst case scenario from here on ‘will never be as bad as the present situation’ and said they should not make such a decision ‘in a rush’.
Cllr Mary Glennon (Planning Alliance) told the hospital people: “You never had a traffic plan in place from the start! You have not adhered to conditions of your planning permission and you have assumed the goodwill of the people of Naas to get you over the hump of creating a traffic crisis in this area.”
She said it’s not too late to go back and find space for a multi storey car park in the hospital grounds, and to charge for parking. She said some hospital staff come from far away and they are adamant they will not come early and walk from a lakes car park to the hospital. Hospital staff had told her they were ‘never properly consulted’ over parking in Ballycane Church car park.
She said a car park at the lakes would interfere with the water system and that under the 1995 Heritage Act, inland waterways are protected. She told how there is a knock on effect when streams such as flow into the lakes, are interfered with and that ‘water has to go somewhere when tarmac is put down’.
She was against the plan will lead to needless upset to the people, the water system, and flora and traffic and the only option is for the hospital to build a multi storey car park to cater for its needs.
Next to speak was Cllr Willie Callaghan (FF) who was disappointed with the hospital report which he said had not answered questions he had put to management previously. He had met with some hospital staff at 7am that morning and asked for their views, and if they had been asked for their views on the car park issue by management. “They said they haven’t been asked but we are being told they were asked by you,” he directed to the hospital people. He had counted 25 construction cars that morning and agreed they should be in Ballycane also. He would not support the lakes car park.
Cllr Pat McCarthy (Lab) understood the plan would contravene the 1999 Town Development Plan and couldn’t see any merit whatever in putting in a car park at the lakes. He said the hospital management had failed to get staff to use Ballycane car park and ‘that was not good enough’. He said Ballycane must come into the equation. He believed a quick turn around in car parking spaces would help but a temporary car park would use up badly needed amenity space and ‘that’s just not on’.
Cllr Eibhlin Bracken (Ind) said the hospital management report ‘meant nothing’. “Ballycane is empty every morning and it’s only a short walk to the hospital’. She believed staff should ‘get up early and walk down to the hospital’.
Next was Cllr Seamie Moore (Ind). He started by telling his fellow councillors: “I hope you all enjoy the rounds of applause because I’m probably not going to get one!” He didn’t.
In his speech he said he was a very practical person and that ‘a lot more abuse is going on in the lakes area instead of a car park’. He was the person who put forward a restriction on the hospital authorities on going ahead with developing the next phase of work because they did not have enough car parking spaces. “This was backed by all councillors but I also asked the hospital authorities for more detailed information.”
The result, he said, is an excellent document and he was satisfied with it. He, too, had stayed up late to read it through. He said the hospital had done ‘a magnificent job’ starting out, but Kildare County Council planners ‘have miscalculated’ the amount of car parking spaces needed.
“They have now detailed where they are at the moment with 187 spaces. The builders’ site keeps on moving but doesn’t leave the area,” he said. He believed when it comes to permission for the primary centre, ‘that is when they should be examining the multi storey car park’.
He said there is ‘a lot of hysteria being thrown around’ on the issue. While he had sympathy for all the people who live nearby there should be ‘trust and control’ ... having the builders move up to park at Ballycane and control of the cars for the staff and visitors must also happen.
He thought the mad rush to get pay parking in there will make the situation worse. He highlighted the 111 spaces now being regularly used on the Ballymore Road. He was pleased to see a letter from Mr Scully in the hospital on behalf of staff he represents. “It’s our hospital and we have to provide some help,” he advocated.
He believed the people in Lakelands should have ‘a fair crack of the quality of life the rest of us enjoy’ and that the construction of the hospital needs help until Kildare County Council moves out of St Mary’s. He believed the Council could create mounds around the temporary car park and only allow one entrance/exit, and close at night.
Mayor Timmy Conway (PD) said it had all been a very good debate but the analysis presented was ‘utterly confusing’.
He said the hospital is an enormous benefit to Naas and the surrounding area. But he was disappointed with the way the management has operated to date. He himself had paid £300 at the time to have signs erected at the hospital to indicate the Ballycane car park was available. “The hospital only put up one sign,” he added, and the scuttle bus to and from Ballycane was ‘sitting idle’ up there. “There was no effort on behalf of the hospital to use that car park.” He also believed construction workers from the hospital should park in Ballycane.
He believed there was no case for a car park at the lakes as ‘alternatives are all over the place’.
Town clerk Declan Kirrane recalled when he had come to Naas in the mid 1990s, the issue had been the threat to Naas Hospital.
Then planning permission was granded for the redevelopment of the hospital by Naas Town Council.
“A condition was they had to submit a traffic management plan. They did, and part of it envisaged the use of Ballycane Church car park. For whatever reason, that did not work.”
As a result, there was this huge amount of indiscriminate parking in the whole hospital locality. He said the lakes site only was supported by the Gardai in terms of road safety and it was practical and funded and would be managed by the hospital.
“People driving to work when they could walk there in 5 minutes is simply NOT on in Naas any more and everybody should realise this,” he told the meeting. He agreed there was ‘some confusion’ in regard to the 1999 Development Plan and the proposed lakeside car park.
The town clerk felt that a multi storey car park is not a short term option. He added that the draft revision of the Parking Bye-Laws will be before the Town Council in June and will then go on public display. It will probably be October when the revised Parking Bye Laws come back to the Council. “We will not be able to enforce them around Lakelands, or other estates in the meantime,” he said.
He said no other proposal for a temporary car park will come before the Councillors and thanked the Mr Browner and Mr Knowles for ‘trying to find a solution’.
Cllr Bracken then asked if the SWAHB could provide supervision in Ballycane car park to encourage hospital staff to park there.
Cllr Charlie Byrne believed if there is illegal parking taking place anywhere, it was the role of the Gardai to take action.
Town Engineer John McGowan reported that some 150-180 vehicles are parking along the roads near the hospital at peak times, the majority from Naas Hospital, as well as all-day parkers trying to avoid parking meters. “Up to 50 cars have been parking in an area in nearby Lakelands housing estate that we hope to declare Residents Only parking,” he said.
Mr McGowan said that up to 280 vehicles park at any one time in the whole hospital area and this would remain the case until January 2006.
