St James’s Hospital staff upset by plan to cut parking

Staff at St James’s Hospital in Dublin have expressed concern to management over plans to cut hundreds of car-parking spaces to make way for the new National Children’s Hospital.

Members of the Impact union have already voted in favour of industrial action over a proposal to charge €500 a year for staff parking spaces.

The threat to take industrial action has not been implemented because the hospital has not yet gone ahead with the proposed charge, but the granting of planning permission for the children’s hospital this week makes that more likely.

Almost 250 staff parking spaces are being cut as part of the redesign of the St James's campus to make way for the children's hospital, according to the report published by An Bord Pleanála when giving the go-ahead for the project.

Work will start in June with the clearance of the site.

Concerns

Impact said it had raised its concerns on parking “in light of the publication of the report” with the hospital HR department.

A union spokesman said: “Given the likelihood of an accelerated process to begin construction, we’d expect to be in discussions with management on this in the very near future.”

The planning report said the children’s hospital would have 1,000 parking spaces – 675 for families and 325 for staff.

This will give a total of 2,011 spaces on the overall St James’s campus, made up of 880 spaces for staff and 1,131 for visitors. This is a reduction of 244 spaces for staff compared to the existing provision.

This provision could be cut further after the board added a condition requiring the creation of 20 “parent and child” spaces at the expense of provision for staff. Staff will also be banned from using the 675 visitor spaces for the new hospital between 7am and 7pm, Monday to Saturday.

Traffic congestion

Staff parking is being constricted to help ease traffic congestion at the hospital. At present 54 per cent of St James’s staff drive to work, but the plan is to reduce this to 27 per cent after the children’s hospital is built.

The planning report expressed astonishment that just 2 per cent of staff use the Luas to get to work despite the light-rail system running through the hospital campus.