OVER 60 evening students of the Limerick College of Further Education on Mulgrave Street, were stunned to find parking offence tickets on their cars.
The tickets had been Issued in a surprise swoop by the Garda Siochana Traffic Corps during courses.
“We were told they were acting on foot of complaints, that they had issued 30 tickets and would be issuing more,” Enda Finn, Head of Education, told the Limerick Post.
At a meeting of the city council’s Joint Policing Committee, attended by Chief Superintendent David Sheahan, Cllr Gerry McLoughlin called for action to curb the “dangerous parking outside and close to the School of Music, located in the college, when there are car parks nearby”.
However, according to Cllr Kieran O’Hanlon, gardai “have been adopting a common sense approach to the situation whereby, because there is a serious lack of car parking space in the area, students have few options.
“There are a lot of double yellow lines in the Mulgrave Street locality, as well as a bus lanes, but I don’t think there is a serious issue as long as students are not parking dangerously at night”.
“There were concerns that the bus lane would take away parking space, but as it ends at 6.30pm, evening students started to use it and no tickets were issued, until last week”.
Cllr O’Hanlon has arranged to meet with senior engineer Rory McDermott, on the issue, and meanwhile the college has been in discussion with a nearby car park.
Pat Mansell, director of Limerick College of Further Education, said they are currently exploring all the possibilities.
“We must adopt a common-sense approach – the city council emphasises the need to bring people into the city – our motivation is to help the city by providing training and education.
“There is a huge demand for our services, we have 13,065 night students – last week, we had graduations, with an attendance of over 1,000”.
