The Government has published details of the €200 employee parking levy, which is to come into force next January. Before we get to the political and policy reasoning behind this, here are the basic facts -
A fee of €200 will apply for each employee parking space within the local authorities of Dublin, Cork, Galway, Waterford and Limerick. The Minister for Finance may extend this levy to other Local Authorities in due course – watch out Sligo!
The employee will pay but the employer will administer payment through the PAYE system – so don’t worry, no one has to deal with their bureaucratic City Hall!
Contrary to gnashing of teeth that has taken place since the measure was announced, it is not as blunt as many have been led to believe. Shift workers (those who start or finish work between 9 pm and 7 am) wont come under this scheme. Payment will be suspended for those on maternity leave, those with a disability will also be exempted and those who only occasionally use parking facilities will not be liable to pay the levy.
Interestingly, there is a clause where if the number of parking spaces is less than half the total number of employees, then the fee will be halved.
The best way to make this last point effective is for the employer to encourage car pooling – a tactic recognition by the Government that public transport is not where it needs to be right now.
The measure has caught the attention of the editor of my local paper (The Galway Advertiser), of which I will quote a little:
And so you end up with proposals like the parking levy which will do damn all for the environment, but will go a long way towards annoying commuters who are fed up seeing stupid proposals like this being dealt with far more quickly than the real issues of getting from home to work (and vice versa). And so today we find out the workings of the fee that you will be charged for the privilege of being able to park your car, the car you have to bring to work because the public transport is either not available or not scheduled to suit workers.
(Someone should probably point out to this guy that if people are forced into using public transport, they’ll be equally forced into reading his crappy freesheet paper to pass the time. But far be it for me to offer such advice.)
And we thought the media indignation would be exhausted by now. Though I agree with him – ire, indignation and anger are what is called for. But if I could suggest that it be directed just a little to the right…
Public transport in this country is a shambles beyond belief. To say we lacked the experience to built a decent system is a cop out – we live in a world full of the necessary experts. To say we lacked the funding is a cop out – we’ve received billions from the EU. Instead what we lacked was any sense that public transport needed to be prioritised. We, through wilful ignorance, developed a bubble where politicians, civil servants and commentators blocked out even the thought of public transport. And this mentality crossed the political divide.
In the mid nineties, the Labour Minister for the Environment Brendan Howlin, in his proposals for funding Local Government, suggested that local authorities would be healthily funded by motor taxes, which would increase as a result of a planned and predicted increase in car usage. To quote from ‘Better Local Government’:
the full proceeds of motor taxation will become a dedicated local government revenue source… (T)his should provide a buoyant source of income for local authorities into the future as car ownership grows.
Our Government could only see an upside to increased car usage!
The complete ignorance of public transport afflicted everyone. I remember canvassing at a door and raising the issue of the local bus service – the woman replied that she was perfectly happy with the service. ‘Oh, how often do you use it,’ I asked. ‘Never, but I see it go passed my house often enough,’ she replied. Sarah Palin, step aside.
It was a circular problem – politicians never prioritised public transport, so the public never opted to use it. Since the public never used it, they never realised how dire the service was, or if they did, they didn’t care. And because they didn’t care, the issue languished at the bottom of the political ladder. Something radical had to be done to break this cycle, hence this levy.
The Editor is right – this will do ‘damn all’ for the environment, at least in the short term. But for the first time in a long time, it will force a large chunk of the voting population to consider public transport. They may not even use it, happy instead to pay this fee, but they may at least realise the paucity of public transport options available for those who are unable to drive, choose not to drive or can’t afford to own a car.
Call it an ‘inverted tax stimulus’. Whereas a tax cut stimulates consumer spending, this tax hike will stimulate public intolerance for the state of our buses and rail. The cost of pushing this issue further up the political agenda? Priceless. Or €200 per employee.
