Published: Tuesday, 30th December, 2008 12:00pm

Parking charges to be increased

Councillors make sacrifices to reduce new rates hike

Cavan Town Council has said it has no other option but to increase parking charges in the town in a bid to makeup a shortfall in funding after central Government cuts its funding for the year by €60,000. The parking charges in the town have not been touched for six years and it was made clear at the budget meeting that there will be at least a 15 per cent hike in parking charges, which will take effect for the last six months of 2009.

The parking by-laws have to be looked at early in the new year. The hike will mean an additional 10 cents for parking on the street - going from 60 cent to 70 cent an hour on the main streets. Consideration will also be given to introducing short duration car parking at a cost of around 20 cents. Councillors Terry Argue, Des Cullen and Paddy Conaty backed the short duration parking concept.

The President of the Chamber of Commerce, Eamon McDwyer said that any attempt to increase parking charges in Cavan town in the current economic climate would be a most unwelcome and negative step. He said that he had suggested that they should have a system where people can park for at least 20 minutes free. 'Any increase in charges would be a wrong thing to do and the wrong time to do it,' he said.

Commenting on the Christmas trade in the town he said that the final week was 'reasonably robust', but was still not on a par with any other year. Some of this could be attributed to the fact that people were reluctant to spend money, as their circumstances were changing. It was not all down to people shopping elsewhere, but there was that element of people being more sensible about their expenditure.

As the recession begins to bite in every sector, Cavan Town Councillors too are making sacrifices in relation to their allowances to ensure that rate payers in the town are only hit with a minimum hike of 2.9%.

This represents an increase of around €3 to every rate payer in the town and if the councillors had not taken the initiative under the leadership of the Mayor Paddy O"Reilly, the rate hike would have been in the order of 4.1% or €73.87 in the Euro.

Full report, page 5