"TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION - A BLUNT INSTRUMENT OF FEAR"

Dún Laoghaire Community Association

Press Release

21st April 2008

Details obtained by Cllr. Denis O’Callaghan on the numbers of County Council parking meters operative in each of the Electoral Wards in Dún Laoghaire Rathdown has generated considerable anger amongst residents and businesses in the Town of Dún Laoghaire.

Coming on the back of the recent disastrous decision by the County Councillors to approve the introduction of Car-Clamping by 14 votes to 11, this new information has the potential to bring the whole decision making process of the County Council into serious disrepute.

The coastal areas of the County including Blackrock, Dún Laoghaire, Dalkey and Ballybrack account for 245 of the 291 Pay-and-Display parking meters operated by Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council. Dundrum has merely 27, Glencullen 19 and Stillorgan surprisingly has not a single County Council parking meter.

The concentration of the parking meters in the coastal areas, overwhelmingly in the residential streets adjoining the town centres of Blackrock, Dalkey and especially, Dún Laoghaire, indicates that the area is nothing but a large municipal car-park.

With 165 meters in the Dún Laoghaire Ward alone, residents and visitors to the Town of Dún Laoghaire are wholly justified in describing the Pay-and-Display system as a local taxation measure penalising those living in the Town and actually driving business out of the Town.

The overwhelming majority of the County Councillors representing the coastal areas of the County were vehemently opposed the introduction of Car-Clamping because it would adversely and solely affect their electorates in Blackrock, Dún Laoghaire and Dalkey and, in fact, inflict serious damage on business and thereby, destroy local jobs.

But they were outvoted by County Councillors from the rest of the County representing areas wholly untouched by the Council’s Pay and Display scheme. This is simply “taxation without representation” imposed by County Councillors who will never have to face the ire of the electorate which has been forced, by their vote, to bear the brunt of this unnecessary and draconian measure aimed at protecting the revenues generated by the County Council’s vast municipal car-park.

The Pay and Display scheme is a locally imposed tax on vehicle owners residing, visiting or doing business in the Town of Dún Laoghaire and Car-Clamping is a blunt instrument of fear imposed to ensure the collection of this unjust and iniquitous local tax.

The Community Association calls on Minister Gormley to intervene immediately and to order an independent examination of the imposition, against the wishes of the electorate as expressed by their public representatives in Dún Laoghaire, of this local taxation and the blunt instrument of enforcement and fear – Car-Clamping.

The manner in which Car-Clamping was introduced has ensured that the festering divisions in the County of Dún Laoghaire Rathdown have suddenly become more entrenched. The civic cohesiveness, much desired and loudly trumpeted by the County Council itself, has been rendered meaningless and foolishly sacrificed for the sake of Car-Clamping.