EuroPark profiting off hospitals?

I paid 2.50 an hour yesterday in tallaght. Was out in 30 minutes.

It cost me more to travel to tallaght and have a meal on the way home than my parking

Some, not all Hospitals have a mechanism in place to discount cost for Relatives that need to make regular visits to a loved in admitted, the same applies for people receiving Dialysis, cancer treatments.

It is fair to say some hospital parking charges are high but just as an example of the opposite for context.

A midlands Hospital I'm know well charges around €2 per hour, I ended up being admitted there having drove myself to A&E, last November for 7 days. I was going to have my car picked up, worried at the cost of parking but told, don't worry, maximum charge is €10, Meters don't go beyond that, in essence €10 for 7 days parking which I feel was more than fair, actually generous.

I never said I did. Please show me where I said that?

Everyone doesn't have a car. Everyone can't afford a car. Free parking doesn't benefit everyone. Free parking benefits car owners. Why should taxes subsidise the transport choices of better off people?

Regardless of the why's the vast majority of people in a hospital get there using a car. Kinda nuts then not to service that requirement in a competent manner.

You've already paid for the parking when they built the hospital. Someone parking there isn't costing anything extra.

The only cost is paying someone or something to collect money.

Considering you often can't get a park, and the parking payment systems are a shambles. It's not competent, it's a farce.

How did you work that out? Maybe if we subsidised public transport users instead of subsidising motorists, we’d have more people travelling by public transport.

Because I've looked at the studies and followed the studies that been done to death on these forums and in the media.

Because I've used these car parks extensively for years.

They paid for it when it was built. It has minimal on going costs.

Including the cost of people who don't park in parking spaces is just gibberish.

The Mater Car Park is full on match days with supporters. It's not even dedicated the hospital. Temple Street doesn't even have parking. How many years was parking in the mater on rubble on a derelict site. Blanch sold off their land for housing. New children's hospital had parking issues before it's even built.

Parking is a shambles. We don't have 24/7 public transport. The excuses for not sorting it all out is pitiful.

They could have a parking tag system and discounts and validated parking for patients and visitors. Especially for those with long term illnesses and conditions.

And yet you ran out of facts, logical arguments and went straight to blithering on about emotions. Ironic.

imagine all the costs of being sick with a long term condition and then someone adds even more costs to it. Nice.

Imagine all the costs of being sick with a long term condition, and not being able to afford a car - and looking out the window at the Cancer Society running a big campaign that will only benefit better off cancer patients.

Parking is no more a 'profit centre' than the cafeteria or the gift shop. It is fairly standard practice to outsource these services to specialist businesses, and get a contribution to hospital costs. Are people going to throw a temper tantrum and stamp their feet over having to pay for a cup of tea? Sure it's only hot water, and they already have the boiler, so it's no cost to them.

What specifically is it about parking that attracts this inflated sense of entitlement from better off people? Clearly we've spent far too many years designing society around the needs of middle-class motorists, so any little chip away at their entitlements is seen as a massive attack. Let's keep on chipping.

I was undergoing extensive treatment at Royal Berkshire hospital in Reading, twice a week, four hours at a time. Parking on site would have been £5.00 p/h. It was cheaper for me to park in the town centre and get a taxi out! No idea what it costs now, this was 15 years ago.

Parking IS reasonably accessible to all, with a small fee to cover the costs of storing your private property on public space. Perfectly reasonable.

"your trying to pit it as favoritism towards cancer patients with cars rather than look at it as a small thing that can take away one other headache for people already burdened with enough hardship."

That's absolutely what it is - special privileges for cancer patients with cars, at the expense of others. If it was combined with some kind of transport programme for ALL cancer patients, that would be something. But it's time we moved on from parking privileges for better off people at public expense