CONCERNS HAVE BEEN raised after parking tickets were issued outside Dublin’s Mater Hospital to taxis whose drivers are obliged to transfer dialysis patients into the facility.

The issue was made known to The Journal by a reader who claimed that drivers from the Lynk taxi service, which has a contract with the hospital to deliver dialysis patients by wheelchair to their relative wards, were falling foul of parking wardens near the hospital.

It is alleged that, while performing this duty, drivers are being issued with tickets by parking wardens for parking outside the hospital’s Eccles Street entrance without paying.

The immediate section of road outside the entrance is marked by a yellow box flanked by two sets of double yellow lines, with a loading bay nearby.

The Eccles Street Entrance to the Mater Hospital, north Dublin. Google Maps Google Maps

The Mater Hospital confirmed the claims in a statement to The Journal, with a spokesperson saying: “The Mater Misericordiae University Hospital’s priority is to be at the frontier of compassion, concern and clinical care for all our patients and their families.”

It continued: “The hospital is aware of the issue you have raised and is proactively engaging with taxi drivers in the hope of a positive resolution.”

However, the hospital conceded that the work of traffic wardens operating in the vicinity is “not within the control of the hospital”, and said it is powerless to do anything about the issue.

The Lynk taxi service told The Journal that there have been “some difficulties” since the introduction of additional parking restrictions at the Eccles Street entrance, and that the company is working closely with the hospital to find a solution.

The question of stringent parking rules at the north Dublin hospital was raised in the Irish Independent last year, when the newspaper reported that over 1,300 people had received parking fines or were clamped there in the preceding five years.

Figures show that the Dublin City Council gathered €100,000 in fines and clamp release fees in that time through the council’s parking enforcement unit, Dublin Street Parking Services, which charges a fee of €125 for clamp release.

The Journal contacted the parking service for comment, but no response has been received. The hospital’s own multi-storey car parking facility, run by Euro Car Parks, charges visitors and patients alike €3.20 per hour or €15 per day.