COMMUTERS WHO will have to pay up to €400 annually in new car-parking charges at train stations may be able to claim tax back similar to rebates on train tickets, according to Iarnród Éireann.
The transport company yesterday confirmed and defended its decision to impose a €2 daily and €8 weekly charge at its car parks in the greater Dublin area.
The charges, which have been criticised by commuters and politicians, will be rolled out during the autumn.
They will start at the beginning of September at 37 stations on the northern line Dart services, Heuston commuter routes, the Maynooth/Longford line and the Wicklow/Gorey line.
The chairman of the Oireachtas Committee on Climate Change and Energy Security, Fine Gael TD Seán Barrett, said the charges would result in a "25 per cent increase in the travelling costs of someone with an annual ticket costing €1,600".
Fine Gael Meath West TD Damien English described the charges as a "stealth tax" on commuters who would have no option but to pay.
He called for the company's €96 million subsidy to be cut by the amount it would receive in car parking.
Labour's commuter-issues spokesman Senator Dominic Hannigan said: "Commuters should be able to claim tax back on these parking charges, just as they are able to do with their train fares."
Barry Kenny, Iarnród Éireann's manager of corporate communications, said: "We can explore the possibility of including car parking in the tax rebate" along with train tickets.
"We'd be very positively disposed to go down that road," although it would depend on the economic climate and whether legislation was necessary.
He said the charges were the lowest of "any paid public transport park-and-ride facilities in the commuter area".
The spokesman said: "This nominal charge will allow us to continue the development of our car park facilities" to include up to 13,000 new spaces.
The company expects about €1 million from the charges, but insists that fewer than 5 per cent of the 150,000 daily commuters would be affected.
He said experience at Leixlip Louisa Bridge, Gormanston, Tullamore and Sallins, where the weekly €5 is to rise to €8, had shown that people living within walking distance were leaving their cars at home because of the charge and " freeing up spaces for people from a wider area to benefit from the parking facilities".
At Leixlip Louisa Bridge, there were now "large numbers of cars from areas such as Clane, Straffan, and other towns in Co Kildare and Co Meath which are not served by rail. These commuters would otherwise not be able to use our services."
Labour transport spokesman Tommy Broughan condemned the charges, claiming they would "greatly discourage people from using public transport". He said that a clamping company would get €2 million of the estimated €3 million in revenue from the new charges.
He said the charges "will also cause even more problems for residents who live in close proximity to rail and Dart stations".
"At present many such residential areas around stations are already choc-a-bloc with cars parked in every available space up to a kilometre or more from the station."
Mr Barrett said that as well as providing a major disincentive to the use of public transport, "this will force commuters to revert to using their cars, thus increasing traffic congestion on our already choking road network and causing CO2 emissions to soar exponentially.
"Our national transport company, CIÉ, cannot shirk their massive responsibility for controlling CO2 emissions, particularly as road transport is the biggest single source and contributes some 93 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions in the transport area."
