THE WESTMEATH businessman who claimed ownership of a public square in Ranelagh has set himself on another collision course with Dublin City Council in a row over car clamping.

Noel O’Gara claims he owns land at the corner of Eaton Road with Terenure Road North, about 3.5km from Dartmouth Square in Ranelagh which he bought for £10,000.

Dublin City Council has customarily been clamping illegally parked vehicles on the corner, which it says is owned by the HSE but which it uses as a pay-and-display car park.

But O’Gara insists the land is his, and that the council has no right to clamp cars on his land – and has even begun using heavy-duty bolt cutters to remove clamps from vehicles.

He told today’s Sunday Independent:

It’s happened on a good number of occasions. No one has come after me yet because they know they have no grounds to do it. It’s my land; they have no right to charge people to park there and they have no right to clamp them.

O’Gara says the HSE forfeited its ownership rights by allowing the land lie vacant for decades, and that he bought the ground rents for the area at an auction in the UK 10 years ago.

The Athlone man – who has been a consistent voice for planning reform, fundamentally believing that someone who owns land should be entitled to make their own use of it – has already removed city council signage and returned it the council’s offices on Wood Quay.

He now demands that the parking meters on the site be taken down to allow for free parking, and says he’s considering suing the city council for the income it has made for parking charges.

O’Gara hopes to open his own car park on the site – as he did in Dartmouth before local residents led a campaign to restore the park to public ownership.

He claimed to have gained ownership of Dartmouth Square when the council, having intended to purchase the square in 1987, instead entered into a ten-year lease.

The company through which O’Gara owned the land has since been liquidated, according to a constituency newsletter from local TD John Gormley.