Bus link service ‘being considered’ for Gorey as town council seek to address shortage of parking spaces

By Simon Bourke, Wexford People

Gorey needs to look to “Dundrum, and the Dublin suburbs” and “not the rest of Co Wexford” for solutions to its parking problems according to one councillor. At the June meeting of the Gorey Kilmuckridge Municipal District (GKMD) Councillor Darragh McDonald asked district manager Philip Knight whether the council was “letting things slide” with regards to acquiring new public car parks.

“As sites come up are we looking at them and saying, ‘right, there’s another 20-30 spaces’?” he asked. “Or are we just letting things slide? We’ve taken our eye off the ball with this.”

However, Mr Knight said his team was actively looking for new sites and that he personally had met with his fellow district managers to discuss the issue in greater depth.

“All the district managers (Gorey Kilmuckridge, Enniscorthy, New Ross, Wexford town, and Rosslare) recently met with the senior roads engineer to look at this and review it,” he said. “It’s about consolidating what we’re doing so that it’s consistent throughout the districts, we want to look at how we manage traffic by improving circulation through the towns.

“But it does take time. We know there are issues with parking in Gorey, how we manage those issues is the question. Personally I’d like to see parking on the street reserved for those who need it most, the elderly and so on.”

The suggestion that Gorey would be thrown in with the other towns of Wexford with regards to parking did not sit well with Cllr McDonald.

“Gorey is completely different to Enniscorthy, Wexford, and New Ross,” he said. “I don’t want bye-laws to be created by some consultant for the whole of the county and then we’re going to have sit around and do them again for Gorey because it’s so different. We should be looking at Dundrum, the Dublin suburbs, not the rest of Wexford.”

Assured by Mr Knight that any plans for the county would not be “one-size fits all” and that the overall aim was a review of the bye-laws, the rest of the councillors put forward their own opinions on the ongoing traffic and parking issues in Gorey town centre. For Cllr Joe Sullivan the focus was on promoting and protecting the businesses which populate Gorey’s Main Street.

“Most of Gorey’s significant businesses are concentrated on the Main St, so the people I want to see parking there are the people who will spend money,” he said. “The heart of this town is the Main St and the side streets off it. We have to protect that.”

Rather than create new car parks and additional spaces, Cllr Nicky Boland had an alternative suggestion.

"Do we fulfil the criteria for a bus link service?” he asked. “It would solve a lot of the issues with school traffic in and around the housing estates. Then there are people working in the town who are driving in and parking in the €2 car parks for the day. If they could use a bus to get in and out of the town it would free up so many parking spaces.”

Confirming that a bus link service is “being considered” as part of the overall plan, Mr Knight was keen to stress that this was his first meeting with the other district managers and that they were “simply sharing ideas for now”.

Meanwhile, Cllr Anthony Donohue couldn’t let a discussion about parking go by without referencing a project he had previously labelled the “worst decision that this council has ever made”.

“I’m shocked and surprised to hear that parking in the town is considered an issue and that we’re looking to buy land for it,” he said with more than a hint of irony. “We had the finest piece of land (St Joseph's CBS on Wexford St) that any council in the country had and we put 30 houses there. But that ship has sailed. We had the chance to create parking and we built 30 houses instead.

"Gorey is eventually going to become a victim of its own success, even on Sunday it’s difficult to get parking. I know elderly people who used to shop in town who have started shopping in Carnew.”

Such was his discontent regarding the project on Wexford St, Cllr Donohue said he would reject any invite to the opening of new houses there.

“Don’t invite me to that, I’m not going to stand in for a photo for something I vehemently oppose.”