Longtime city clampers DSPS, after losing a competition for the council's new contract to rival APCOA, have challenged that decision in court. It's not over yet.
The High Court has cleared the way for Dublin City Council to award a €51.2 million parking-enforcement contract to APCOA Parking Ireland.
If that happens now, it would mean the council leaving its long-time clampers Dublin Street Parking Services (DSPS).
The council's contract with DSPS's parent company was due to expire this year, and it tendered for a company to take on the new parking-enforcement contract.
The case arose after Q-Park – ultimate owner of DSPS, which has been the city's clamper since 2004 – challenged the outcome of this procurement process, in which APCOA emerged as the winner.
Q-Park claims the process was unlawful because, among other things, there should have been greater transparency in the way the council evaluated the tenders.
In a 30 July judgement, Mr Justice Michael Twomey emphasised that the court was not deciding whether Q-Park's challenge to the procurement process would ultimately succeed.
Instead, the hearing concerned whether the automatic suspension triggered under procurement law should remain in place until the “substantive judicial review is finalised”. It should not, he decided.
The judgement found that the “balance of justice” favoured allowing the contract to proceed while a procurement challenge by the unsuccessful bidder and incumbent contractor, Q-Park Ireland, continues.
Neither Dublin City Council nor APCOA responded to queries sent Wednesday asking whether they would now proceed to sign the contract and work together on parking enforcement in the city.
But some Dublin city councillors are keen to put Q-Park in the rearview mirror.
“We've had issues with Dublin Street Parking Services for quite a number of years,” says Councillor Keith Connolly, of Fianna Fáil.
“Whether it be the scandal about the easing off time when they get so many clamps done,” he says, “or whether it be the fact that regional bases don't exist, i.e., suburbs are less attended, or when you call in, it takes a very long time to call out.”
Connolly says he hopes that the new contract, yet to be made public, will include improvements in those realms.
The judgement repeatedly emphasises that procurement disputes are not merely legal arguments but have immediate commercial consequences.
Justice Twomey noted that under procurement law, simply issuing judicial review proceedings automatically prevents a public authority from signing a contract with the successful bidder, regardless of the eventual merits of the case.
“If one is to bear in mind the commercial realities of these legal proceedings, this is one important issue,” Twomey said.
Because Q-Park is the incumbent operator, the suspension had already required Dublin City Council to extend its existing contract until the end of October 2026.
If the suspension remained in place while the litigation ran its course, the judge said the existing contract could be extended for as long as two years.
"Judicial review of a public procurement process is therefore an exceptionally powerful tool," he said.
This, he said, represented the practical consequence of the proceedings. "This is the real-life effect of the judicial review taken by Q Park."
He estimated that an extension of the existing contract during the litigation "could be worth millions of euros" to Q-Park.
However, he also made clear that “there is no criticism of Q Park for issuing the proceedings".
As the courts “operate in the real world”, he could not ignore the commercial consequences when deciding whether justice required the suspension to continue, he said.
A central issue is APCOA's proposed vehicle pound on Botanic Road, which formed the basis of its successful tender.
The council on 24 June granted Botanic Business Centre Ltd planning permission to change the use of a warehouse there to a car storage facility.
APCOA held an option to lease the site, but that option is due to expire on 30 September 2026, the judgement says.
The company argued that it could not justify paying between €200,000 and €250,000 annually for premises it could not use while the litigation remained unresolved, particularly when procurement cases commonly take around 18 months to conclude.
Twomey acknowledged this as “dead money” for APCOA.
The court accepted that this issue extended beyond a simple delay in signing the contract.
If APCOA lost access to the Botanic Road site, it might not be able to perform the contract on the basis of its winning tender.
Twomey accepted the council and APCOA’s submission that “the continuation of the Suspension may render the tender process moot”.
The judge also rejected Q-Park's argument that APCOA could simply substitute another vehicle pound.
"It is not for a losing tenderer to say that the winning tenderer can simply get another pound," he wrote.
Further, according to the council, if this all results in the need to hold a new tender competition, it would mean a “complete waste of public funds”.
An important aspect of the judgement concerned Q-Park's refusal to provide APCOA with an undertaking – a legally binding promise – for damages.
While Q-Park stood to benefit commercially if the suspension remained in place, APCOA faced paying up to €250,000 a year merely to preserve access to the Botanic Road site, with no guarantee it would ultimately receive the contract.
"In this Court's view, this failure is a factor which weighs in the balance of justice against the grant of the injunction,” Twomey said, in his written judgement.
The judge also described the competing financial impacts on the two parties as fundamentally unfair. "For this Court, there is an injustice (to APCOA) arising from the two contrasting financial positions of Q Park and APCOA, arising from the continuation of the Suspension.”
The judgement suggests this may become an important consideration in future procurement disputes.
Drawing on English case law, Justice Twomey said that where a successful tenderer stands to suffer significant financial loss, the absence of an undertaking in damages from the unsuccessful challenger can properly influence the court's decision on whether to continue an automatic suspension.
The ruling does not determine whether Dublin City Council conducted the procurement process lawfully.
Q-Park's judicial review will proceed in due course, and the court made no findings on the merits of its allegations concerning the tender evaluation.
Instead, Justice Twomey concluded that, at this interim stage, justice favoured allowing the procurement decision to take effect.
Accordingly, the automatic suspension was lifted, allowing Dublin City Council to proceed with awarding the contract to APCOA while Q-Park's broader challenge to the procurement process continues.
The case will be before the court again on 13 October, “to deal with any final orders and costs”.
However, some city councillors hope that if APCOA takes over under a new contract, it will lead to a change not only of company, but of policy.
They have been pushing for years for the council executives, who decide these things, to change the terms of the new parking-enforcement contract.
Councillor Feljin Jose, of the Green Party, said he would like to see a greater focus on towing in the next contract.
For example, he says, in Phibsborough there are a lot of laneways behind buildings that lead to residents' private car ports.
Often people will park blocking the mouth of the laneway, thinking it’s okay to plonk themselves there as it’s in off the road – but subsequently blocking people from being able to leave from their car port.
This means residents become weary of using the parking spaces behind their homes, in the lane, and park in the front, leading to more parking pressure on the main road.
These are the parking issues that people go through every day, that can go unaddressed, Jose says.
“There’s more to life than 10 minutes overstay on a parking space in the city centre, which seems to be the main, the main priority,” he says.
Like Councillor Keith Connolly, of Fianna Fáil, Jose is also eager to see a commitment in the new contract to spreading parking enforcement across the city, and not just hyper-fixated on the low-hanging fruit of the inner-city.
Connolly said he wants to see a broad shift away from clamping, and a greater emphasis on fixed penalty notices, and towing where needed.
Indeed, the National Transport Authority (NTA) has said that Dublin City Council is the only local authority still using clamping as a parking-enforcement method.
This despite years of questions about clamping's effectiveness, and calls for an end to its use, and a focus instead on fines and towing.
The council's press office has repeatedly declined to say answer questions about what changes, if any, drivers and other people in the city are likely to see under the new contract.
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