Car parking was a major theme of Galway City Council’s final meeting of the year, but the authority’s full agenda was not completed after byelaws were updated for the first time since 2009.
Councillor Terry O’Flaherty (Ind ) tried in vain to have a motion she submitted in August heard regarding the overall situation of Pay & Display parking across the city, while Councillor Mike Crowe (FF ) asked fellow councillors to delay discussion of a new Parking Payments Report from city officials, because his colleague, Councillor Peter Keane (FF ), who wished to contribute on this topic, was unavoidably absent.
Figures released to Councillor O’Flaherty show parking fines have tripled since 2023 when just 1,717 tickets were posted.
More than 5,300 parking-related fines have been issued this year, of which 4,183 were paid. There were 348 parking-related cases that went to court.
Galway City Council issued 4,096 fines last year: 3,064 were paid, with 314 cases requiring court proceedings.
Parking netted €2.8m in revenue for Galway city council over the year, with around €1m collected in fines.
Councillor Frank Fahy (FG ) demanded to know how much City Hall spent on solicitors to bring cases to court, but that figure was unavailable.
City Hall’s Director of Operational Development, Patrick Greene, confirmed that money paid on foot of court fines goes into the national exchequer, not the local authority’s coffers. He said there had been some leniency on pay and display in early 2025 because of a dispute regarding parking meters, but that an expanded team of wardens was still ticketing for other offences, especially illegal parking on footpaths and yellow lines.
Councillor Shane Forde (FG ) requested that wardens begin their shifts earlier than 9am, to catch overnight illegal parking which disrupts the morning rush hour. Councillor Níall McNelis (Lab ) requested officials audit signage around the city before new rules came into force “as there’s a lot of street clutter around town”.
Before putting new byelaws to a vote, Mayor Mike Cubbard (Ind ) said he had detected a coarsening of attitudes amongst drivers across Galway when it came to parking illegally. “There has been absolute ignorance shown, for example, when people living in the city centre have asked people not to park right across their front doors,” he complained.
City councillors unanimously voted to adopt an updated set of parking byelaws. The reform was necessary to confirm digital parking permits, define online payments, and create new offences related to blocking EV charging points.
A number of councillors, vociferously led by Donal Lyons (Ind ), initially objected to references to clamping in the byelaws, as the practice was effectively banned in Galway in 2006 due to public opposition.
Officials explained the byelaws should include clamping as an option, and just because councillors voted their approval of the new rule book did not mean Galway city council would change its stated policy against street clamping.
