The roads are so blocked that a fire trick, headed to an emergency, couldn't get through a few weeks ago, said a councilllor at a recent meeting.
Residents of Kilmore West have been struggling for years with overflow car parking by Beaumont Hospital staff clogging up their neighbourhood.
At Monday’s meeting of the North Central Area Committee, Councillor Jesslyn Henry of the Social Democrats, who lives in Kilmore West, said there was a serious fire in the neighbourhood a few weeks ago.
A fire truck was unable to get down the road and sort the blaze, she said. “This is how bad it’s gotten.”
Last week, someone from the hospital parked in Henry’s driveway, she said. “And it was stuck there for the day.”
Dublin City Council's response to repeated complaints about the situation has been that residents should back a pay-and-display scheme.
That would mean residents would have to buy annual parking permits, and everyone else would have to pay for short-term parking.
But residents say they shouldn't have to pay for annual parking permits because of what hospital staff are doing.
Besides, pay-and-display parking fees wouldn't be enough to push staff to park on campus, they say, because the parking there is so limited, and also would be more expensive.
Local residents and councillors are also sceptical of plans by the hospital to hire a company to provide hundreds of new parking spaces for hospital staff in satellite car parks, and a shuttle service back and forth to the hospital.
At Monday’s meeting, independent Councillor John Lyons said he didn’t think people would choose shuttling in from Santry or Swords over the convenience of parking just outside the hospital grounds.
If coming through Whitehall or across the Oscar Traynor Road, it would take a shuttle bus too long to get to Beaumont Hospital and add ages to their journey, he says.
But so far, there don't seem to be many other ideas floating around.
Henry, of the Social Democrats, says SIPTU, a union that represents many workers in Beaumont Hospital, has raised the issue of staff parking with the hospital board many times.
SIPTU has not yet responded to queries about this sent Wednesday.
But recent planning permissions at Beaumont Hospital appear to show a planned erosion of the number of car parking spaces there, over time.
In 2024, the council granted the hospital permission to build a seven-storey ward block including 95 patient rooms. This would include the reconfiguration of parking areas, resulting in the loss of seven car parking spots, according to a letter from the council's Roads, Streets and Traffic Department.
The same year, the council granted the hospital permission to provide an endoscopy unit with 18 patient rooms, plus treatment and recovery rooms. This would involve the removal of a car park, and the net loss of 70 car parking spots.
In 2025, Beaumont got permission to build a new two-storey emergency department, resulting in a “net reduction of 172 no. [car parking spaces]”, and permission for a “single storey extension to the existing multi-storey car park”, which would “create an additional 146 no. parking bays”, replacing some but not all of those lost spaces.
Still, the council's roads department, in its 2026 letter about a hospital plan to extend the emergency department, said it saw no need to require additional car parking.
The hospital is "highly accessible" by car, public transport and foot, although cycling options are "limited", the letter says. "Future Bus Connects routes will further enhance connectivity, linking the hospital to the city centre, surrounding suburbs and key locations such as DCU, Clontarf, and Santry," it says.
In the end, it concludes that "the non-provision of additional car parking is acceptable".
Meanwhile, staff who can't find parking at the hospital, have been squeezing their cars into on-street parking in the residential roads of Kilmore West.
Lyons, the independent councillor, told Monday’s committee meeting that two months ago he walked up and down Cromcastle Green on a Tuesday morning.
“Out of 56 cars parked on the road, residential road, where people live, 28 of the cars parked on the road had Beaumont Hospital permit parking stickers on the windscreens,” he said.
As to why Kilmore West takes the brunt of the parking overflow and not the other surrounding areas of the campus, Henry says its simply more convenient.
"The staff entrance is this side," she says. "It's also the fact that we're closer to the M50, we're closer to the M1, those things come into play."
The council's repeated proposed solution to the issue has been the end of free on-street parking in the area.
When Henry, the Social Democrats councillor, brought a motion to Monday's meeting about the issue, that's what the council manager's response suggested, again.
But Cat Inglis, who runs the Bus Stop Shop in Kilmore West, says that from the many conversations she has had with her fellow concerned residents down the years, the majority don’t want pay-and-display or permit parking.
Permit parking only allows for two cars in each household, Inglis says.
Because of the housing crisis, she says, there are lots of families in the area whose adult children still live at home, who also need their own cars for work and life.
She knows households who have four cars between them, out of necessity.
So it would make life harder for residents, and wouldn't even solve the problem, she said.
Staff and visitors to the hospital are charged an hourly rate of €2.40 to park, or €9 for 24 hours. The cost of pay-and-display in the area, which is in the council’s orange zone, would be €1.2o an hour.
There is no differentiation between costs for staff and patients, other than annual staff car parking discount in the multi-storey parking, a hospital spokesperson said on Thursday.
It’d still be cheaper for a lot of people to park around Kilmore West, says Inglis.
Not only that, but two hospital workers leaving the campus at 5 o’clock on Wednesday evening – who didn't want to be named criticising their employer – said that cost isn’t the main issue.
Both were heading separately to their cars parked around Kilmore West, and both said that there were simply not enough parking spaces provided by the hospital on its grounds.
One said driving to work was essential for her as she has to drop off and pick up her kids elsewhere before and after her shift.
Last April, a spokesperson for Beaumont Hospital said they were aware of Kilmore West residents' concerns, and were “committed to being a good neighbour”.
After about a decade of pushing for a meeting, councillors finally had the opportunity to sit down with the hospital board last June.
The idea was touted from the board that the hospital would lease out parking spaces offsite and shuttle bus people to Beaumont.
The Omni Shopping Centre car park in Santry and the former Hertz site in Swords were potential options under consideration by the board, says Henry, the Social Democrats councillor.
That hospital spokesperson also said last April that, “The hospital plans to convene a regular engagement with the local councillors on matters of shared concern which will inform communication and development of mobility management and other hospital strategies”.
But, says Henry, after last June’s meeting, the trail seemed to go cold until last month.
That's when Beaumont Hospital put out an expression of interest, looking for a company to provide it with around 500 car parking spaces within a five-kilometre radius of its main campus.
Ideally, the document said, the successful applicant will have the capacity for an additional 500 spaces during the contract’s span – which could last up to 20 years.
In addition to this plan, the hospital is also working on longer-term plans to provide more car parking on its campus, a spokesperson said Thursday.
"The hospital has two projects on the HSE Capital Plan which will expand the provision for car parking services at the hospital," the spokesperson said.
"These are complex projects requiring significant capital investment that are currently undergoing detailed design," they said. "The intention is that these proposals will meet the long-term need for the hospital."
The hospital has now reached out to councillors with a view to meeting them in July to discuss any new developments, like the plan to begin shuttling people in from off-site car parks, the spokesperson said.
“Beaumont Hospital understands the inconvenience and that it can make life difficult for residents and indeed staff and are looking to resolve matters to ameliorate same whilst ensuring care to patients is not indirectly affected,” the spokesperson said.
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