Despite car-park fee increase, more people taking train from Clonsilla, Irish Rail says

Despite fears among local councillors that an increase in fees at the council's car park near the Clonsilla train station would discourage people from parking there and travelling by train, an Irish Rail spokesperson says numbers have actually risen.

Fingal County Council brought in new parking control bye-laws on 16 February. The changes included increases in on-street and off-street parking charges.

Since then, the council's average gross monthly income from car parking at Clonsilla train station has doubled – from €3,412.48 to €7,332.37 – according to a report at the 28 May Blanchardstown local area committee meeting, in response to a motion from Solidarity Councillor John Burtchaell.

"We see the massive increase in revenue taken," Burtchaell said at the meeting. "What we're looking at here is a captive market of commuters who take the train to work and have no real choice but to bring their car down to Clonsilla, park it there, and you know, we stung them badly here."

At the March meeting of the same committee, Sinn Féin Councillor Angela Donnelly and Fianna Fáil Councillor Tom Kitt both brought motions asking council managers to reconsider the increase in parking fees in Clonsilla – and the committee backed their motions. At the May meeting, Donnelly asked what the council had done in response to those motions.

In March, and on 28 May in response to Donnelly's, and also in response to Burtchaell's motion, the response has been consistent: council managers have no plan to go back and reduce the parking fees at Clonsilla train station, or anywhere else.

"These bylaws were adopted unanimously by the full council," said council administrative officer Niamh Russell.

Discouraging train use?

Burtchaell, at the meeting on 28 May, during the discussion on the car park fees at Clonsilla, said "We shouldn't be discouraging public transport use. These people are doing the right thing, they're taking the train to work."

It's quite difficult to get to the Clonsilla train station from several areas around it, so people have to drive to it and park nearby, if they want to commute by train into town, he said. "Really, we're hammering people here, who have no other choice."

During the same discussion, Fine Gael Councillor Ted Leddy said that, "anecdotally, the evidence is very, very strong that more and more people along the Maynooth line [the train line at Clonsilla station] are deciding to – they've done the calculations and they've decided to drive".

This goes against the council's efforts to try to get more people to travel by public transport, or by bike or foot, and fewer using private cars, Leddy said.

But in response to a query about trends in train use from Clonsilla station, a spokesperson for Irish Rail said on 8 June that, actually, "Comparing February to May 2026 with February to May 2025 indicates that journeys from Clonsilla Station have increased by c. 9%."

Was Leddy surprised by these figures from Irish Rail? "Yes and no," he said by phone on Tuesday. "There's been signfiicant developments in the area so that might be a factor."

Also, he said he didn't mean just use of the train from the Clonsilla station, "I suppose what I was thinking of was the wider Maynooth line," he said.

He pointed, in particular, to the Navan Road Parkway Station, a few stations further towards town, in Ashtown. That one's managed by Apcoa, not Fingal County Council.

The problem there, Leddy says, is that cars keep getting broken into at that car park – he provided an (anonymised) email from a car park user, and a couple of photos to support this – so some people are becoming reluctant to park there and take the train.

A mistake?

Burtchaell said the increase in long-stay car parking fees in Fingal from €2/day to €5/day is yet another increase in cost of living.

"We're in a cost of living crisis and we've had increases in council rent, we've had increases in recycling fees, and now parking charges," he said. "I mean the council shouldn't really making people's lives harder, we should be moving to try to you know improve people's quality of life."

Yes, said Donnelly, the Sinn Féin councillor, "I do feel we've let people down and I think sometimes we need to remember that we're a society and a community and it's not Fingal Inc."

Labour Councillor John Walsh said he didn't think this particular increase "was the intention, like what has happened here is a mistake was made, like a mistake was made in the bye-laws, this was inadvertent, it was not something anybody intended".

"Point of order," said the committee's chair, Fianna Fáil Councillor Eimear Carbone-Mangan. "It wasn't a mistake. There was no mistake."

"Maybe I'll reword that, alright, I think what has happened was an error," Walsh said. "It's something that arose inadvertently. It's not the result of a deliberate policy and we should simply take it up again and reverse it."

Burtchaell called it "an unintended consequence, at least from the councillors' point of view, that it wasn't comprehended that we weould be hammering commuters like this".

But Russell, the council administrative officer answering councillors' questions about the issue, said the process of amending the council's parking control bye-laws had been long and in-depth.

The charges hadn't been increased in 15 years, and there was "extensive consultation" on the proposed changes, she said.

Among other changes, the amendments to the bye-laws increased fees at long-stay car parks. There are four, she said, in Clonsilla, Skerries, Rush and Malahide.

"I said to everybody the reason we were doing this was because we're looking for increased resources for parking wardens", Russell said.

The plan, she said, was to increase from six full-time equivalent parking wardens to nine, Russell said. The additional wardens would "patrol areas outside of pay and display [parking areas] where there is problematic and persistent illegal parlking", she said.

Reopening the bye-laws would be a huge piece of work, Russell said.

"In order to make changes to one element of the bye-laws, it requires a full statutory public consultation, public engagement again, and it needs to go to the council meetings, to SPC [strategic policy committee], to CPG [corporate policy group], so there is a very large volume of work involved," she said.

There's no plan to do that this year, Russell said. "I can't speak about the programme of works for next year, because we haven't started looking at that at this point."

Donnelly, the Sinn Féin councillor, who'd got a similar response to her own question at the meeting, said she was "quite surprised at the response".

"I think it's fair enough that the work plan has been done for 2026 but I think the answer should have said it will be on the work plan for 2027," she said. "And I think when we as councillors pass motions or ask for something, it shouldn't be a case of no we're not doing that."

For his part, Burtchaell suggested a way to reduce costs on parkers at long stay car parks in Fingal, including in Clonsilla, without reopening the parking control bye-laws.

What about a rebate or voucher scheme, where if a driver spends, say, €100 on parking at a Fingal car park in a seven- or eight-week period, they could apply for vouchers for free parking for an equivalent amount? "Something to ameliorate the damage we've done to commuters here," he said.

Burtchaell said he'd plan to bring a formal proposal along those lines to the table in future.