Time to crack down on illegal parking in disabled spots, councillors say

On a recent Saturday afternoon, Duncan Byrne sat in his wheelchair on a footpath on Mount Prospect Avenue in Clontarf, waiting for his family who had just unloaded the chair from their car.

They’d found this disabled spot and grabbed it. They were glad to have it, Byrne said – even if it wasn’t the very closest to St Anne’s Park, where they were headed. 

It was a sunny spring day. In the park, the food trucks were out, and musicians had put out guitar cases for change and kids danced. 

Byrne usually takes public transport, and he doesn’t mind wheeling himself about – he uses a non-motorised wheelchair – and he said he can get back from O’Connell Street to his home in Clontarf just by arm power.

But if he’s going by car, parking and getting out of the car can be tricky, Byrne said. He needs the right design.

Yet it’s common to find that “wheelchair spots are taken up by a regular car user”, Byrne said. And “most, if not all, have been blocked up".

This problem is “very real. It’s absolutely real”, says John Fulham, a wheelchair user who works for the Irish Wheelchair Association (IWA). 

“I can tell you, at our motor and transport office, we get at least 15 calls a day around this and around the abuse,” Fulham says.

Green Party Councillor Feljin Jose says people who shouldn’t park in disabled spots “do it all the time, and like, they get away with it”. 

Jose said that’s because in general, “parking enforcement in Dublin City is just extremely below the standard that it needs to be”. And, he said, among many other Dublin residents, that also affects the disabled community.

“You've got a higher chance of someone else walking past someone who needs the spot and actually calling you out, as opposed to the parking enforcement unit actually clamping you or fining you,” said Jose.

While illegal parking in disabled spots already comes with a higher fine, he thinks that higher fine should be raised further. Also, he said, enforcement for disabled parking spots should be more of a priority. 

Fianna Fáil Councillor Keith Connolly said he also wants even higher fines for illegal parking in disabled spots, and more enforcement.

It’d be up to the Minister for Transport to increase the fines. But it’s in Dublin City Council managers’ power to increase enforcement.

Every few years, the council puts out a tender to choose a company to award the contract to, for the work of fining, clamping and towing illegal parkers – and the council’s due to go through this process again soon.

Both Jose and Connolly said they want to see notable changes in the council’s next parking-enforcement contract. 

Illegal parkers and “two-minute people"

Byrne, the man who was going to St Anne’s Park with his family, said illegal parking tends to be worse during busy times, like Fridays or after work or on holidays. 

But in general, Byrne said, it happens anytime. And it can be a challenge for him.

Sometimes people feel justified to take disabled spots because they have an injury, Byrne said.

"They just think that, ‘Oh, I hurt my leg, therefore I can use it, because it's a bit more difficult for me now to walk the extra distance,’" he says.

It’s actually not the same, though, Byrne said. 

A wheelchair user needs the extra space to get the chair out of the car, and to line it up to get into it, said Byrne.

Fulham, of the IWA, said the same. “It's not about ease. It's number one, we need the spaces to be wide enough, so we can open the doors of our cars to get our chairs out," said Fulham.

While Byrne is always a passenger, Fulham drives, and that means he’s often alone in his car. He needs to know he can get his chair out and navigate onto the sidewalk, and later, get back in.

So if disabled spots are filled, he can’t just use a general parking spot, because “if someone parks right up beside you, all of a sudden, you're not able to get into your car,” Fulham said.

Fulham said it’s not unusual for him to find there’s no disabled spots available because of vehicles illegally occupying the spaces. He said one issue is “two-minute people”.

The ones who look out the window and declare they’re only there for two minutes, he says. 

That’s so common, says James Casey, an environmentalist and activist.

“The thing with micro-aggressive-ableism is that, the more you go into society, the more you meet it,” Casey said. “It can be coming from elements of society you would really be shocked with."

It is never legal to be in a disabled spot without a pass, not even to idle there.

But it’s not uncommon, says Fulham of the IWA, that if a disabled person confronts a driver illegally parked in a disabled spot about not having a blue badge, that person will get aggressive.

Casey said he’s seen this attitude with parking – but it also happens in other situations to people in wheelchairs.

"I've been spat at. I've been followed home,” said Casey. “People telling me – and I've had friends who've been told – you should be killed. Honestly."

Tackling the issue

Councillors Connolly and Jose want a system of enforcement that deters illegal parking in disabled spots, they say.

For Jose, the current contract with DSPS is simply not big enough. He said the next parking-enforcement contract the council awards should put more people on the street fining, clamping and towing cars.

"The service level that has been agreed with that company is just too low. It's not enough to discourage illegal parking,” Jose said. “At the moment, they do not have resources to respond to the reports, let alone do proactive enforcement.”

For years Dublin City Council had an “early finish” scheme, where if DSPS crews clamped or towed a certain number of cars, they could finish their shifts early. This incentivised crews to go to dense, central areas where they could find lots of illegally parked cars fast.

Some councillors representing areas further from the city centre have long complained that they get very little parking-enforcement in the suburbs. Connolly, the Fianna Fáil councillor, says that’s a problem in Finglas, which he represents.

So getting DSPS to fine or tow a car illegally parked in a disabled bay in such areas requires a call, Connolly said. “If I see someone parked in a disabled bay, you have to call parking services, and hope that maybe they can send somebody.” 

They usually do not. An analysis of more than 16,000 records from 2021 to 2023 showed that in about 70 percent of cases, when someone complained about a vehicle obstructing something, DSPS didn’t go there at all – or didn’t get there in time to even see the vehicle, much less decide whether enforcement was appropriate.

Connolly said in the next parking-enforcement contract, he wants to see parking enforcement less centralised. At a minimum he wants to see a suburban base for parking-enforcement crews, he says. 

He wants to see more systematic enforcement in disabled spots on the new contract.

“If you're parking in a disabled bay, that should be given some sort of priority,” he said. “I think that would actually send the proper message that we don't tolerate illegal parking here.”

It’s unclear when there will be a new parking-enforcement contract. It was due to end in the summer of 2024, but the council extended it. 

Now, Jose, the Green Party is wondering, where is the new contract? When will it happen? What will be in it? He’s tried asking, but hasn’t got answers, he said.

The council also has not responded to press queries asking about the timeline for the new contract and what they hope to see in it.

In addition to the new parking-enforcement contract, maybe the council could even bring in parking wardens, patrolling in all different areas of the city, said Connolly, the Fianna Fáil councillor.  

Jose said it would be good to bring in “community wardens”. Dublin city councillors have several times in recent years raised the idea of the council putting such wardens – who could enforce parking, littering, and dog-fouling bylaws – on the capital’s streets. 

“Local issues that do not need to be escalated to Gardaí level or anything like that,” Jose says.

Cork City Council has had community wardens since 2008. “They’re extremely effective,” Fine Gael Councillor Shane O’Callaghan, a Cork city councillor, said in September. 

Dublin City Council did not reply to queries – or multiple follow-ups – asking why it can’t have in-house community wardens if Cork City Council can.

"The truth is that the moral code or obligation doesn't resonate with all people,” said Fulham, of the IWA. “We need visible enforcement and more presence of traffic wardens tackling this issue."

Environmentalism and accessibility

There are certain times when cars are needed, says Casey, the environmentalist and activist. Usually though, he thinks they shouldn’t be.

Casey uses a wheelchair, but he says he’s really not bothered about protecting disabled spots in Dublin city centre. 

Mostly, in his opinion, the focus should be on making public transport more accessible.

"Disability is caused by society. It's structural and environmental and cultural barriers,” Casey said. 

Disability is the result of design choices that aren’t made with disabled people in mind, Casey says. It’s not really that he’s disabled, it’s that spaces aren’t designed for him.

For Casey, it shouldn’t be a choice between living with a disability and living sustainably.

He has seen through his work in development across Africa and West Asia, how the climate crisis disproportionately affects disabled people, he says.

"Disabled people are the first people that are going to feel climate change, because you don't have the resources or the skills, or the logistics to go and move with that."

He says he wants to protect the environment, and he also wants to protect disabled people for the future that’s coming.

He wants the disabled perspective to be integrated into the plans for the future on a warmer planet. 

Both Byrne, the man at St Anne’s Park, and Fulham, of the IWA, agreed with many of Casey’s premises, but they also both said protecting disabled car parking spots is still important.

“Cars are needed for individuality and independence, because, again, not all buses, not all trains, go to the specific place you want to go,” Byrne said.

Funded by the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme.