EuroPark profiting off hospitals?

It doesn't matter.

When sickness strikes the private car comes into it's own and most of us recognise that.

Was there anything I said that was incorrect?

Aren't you the one wanting them to reduce their incomes by providing free or cheap parking?

Whatever the figure is, the hospitals have the choice of spending it on medical facilities or on parking facilities. And with all the many difficulties we have in the health services today, you're banging on about spending on parking facilities. Seriously?

They set up on those sites before cars were invented and or before most people had cars.

They are now in some cases in the congestion zone. TBH there is on street parking and car parks all around them.

That they bang on about parking suggests its an issue for them.

There is a chance he thinks that how it works. Nurse Mary in the security hut with cap and a bag of lose change.

A change that will benefit everyone WHO OWNS A CAR. You've missed the target again.

Oh, I guess sweeping generalisations about everyone having and using a car are OK, but other generalisations are not allowed.

They have facilities teams for sure, for managing the facilities in the hospital. They don't have facilities teams for managing car parks. And again, interesting to note that will ALL the issues going on in the health service, your priority for staffing and spending is car parking.

Nothing actually medical - just car parking.

”Stop talking about medical issues “ says man banging on about immune weakened patients.

Do many people who don’t own cars use hospital car parking?

"...hospital funds should not be spent to benefit better off people..."

That's another off topic tangent about car owners and wealth disparity for some bizarre reason. It's hypocrisy considering you were holding up private hospitals as an example earlier. Perhaps people with expensive bicycles shouldn't be "facilitated" either.

It's yet again got nothing to do with having poorly managed facilities and car parking.

What figures are you basing your 'vast profits' conclusion on? What costs did you include in the analysis? How many years did you depreciate land costs over?

I've never seen any financial analysis that would support or deny that question. Income costs have been published, but not expenditure.

It's no particular surprise that private hospitals, which by their very nature discriminate against less well off people, will look after better off customers.

The topic is public funds being used to provide or subsidise free parking at hospitals, so car ownership and wealth disparity are absolutely on topic, seeing as parking tends to be used by better off people.

The proposed model of free parking is punitive for patients of hospital services, as less well off patients end up paying for the parking used by better off patients. That is just unethical.

You need to keep trying harder and harder, until the penny drops for you that everyone doesn't drive. So, your claim would actually be something like;

compassionate improvement one less thing hassling some better off people in a moment of hardship, with the costs shared by everybody, including less well off people, 3rd party companies should not be profiting off hospital car parks end of.

The question of outsourcing or not outsourcing is a different topic, and goes beyond parking. Many hospitals outsource many services that would previously have been done by internal staff; canteen, security, gift shop, cleaning, parking and more. Your analysis seems to miss the point that outsourced staff are going to be much lower cost than internal staff, because they don't have public service terms and conditions, including pensions. So if they were to insource rather than outsource, the costs would increase significantly.

I don't have any hatred for drivers. I DO drive myself. The only think I hate is the needs of drivers being prioritised above all others.

The only skew in my argument is against perpetuating continued privileges for better off motorists at the expense of the wider population.

You may not have said anything against improving public transport, but you were remarkably silent on the matter of public transport, almost as if public transport users just don't count. You never mentioned any creative solutions, like Leap Card credit for public transport users or similar.

It is funny though how you have to twist my words in order argue with them. No-one said anything about 'an attack on other people' or 'taking anything away from other patients' or 'an attack on people that don't drive'. They're your words, not mine. It is, as I said, and as is patently clear, a privilege for better off people, at the expense of the wider population.

I'm not going to get into the outsourcing issue again, seeing as you ignored the point about the higher cost of public service staff.

You realise that car ownership is particularly low in our cities, not quite as widespread as you might think.

And yes, car owners are generally better off than non-car owners. Your 01 Yaris friend might not be part of the elite, but he's better off than the student commuting on his squeaky 2nd hand mountain bike.

And there's your twisting again, all those things that I never actually said, about motorists being 'elite' and having doctors and nurses in car parks.

Free parking for visitors and patients takes budget and resources that could otherwise be used for transport for less well off people. You know that hospital budgets are limited? Spending in one area means less spending in other areas.

I never said that they ARE subsidised. I said that the proposal for free or low cost parking would mean that they would be subsidised. I never said 'net benefit' at all, yet another example of words being put into my mouth so people can argue with them.

And hilarious to see the outraged sarcasm at the idea that non-motorists should have their travel subsidised, another clear manifestation of driver entitlement.

Its not sarcasm to point out a thread about parking is not about people who don't use them.

Benefit, subsidized is all the same thing. But if they generate income from the hospital then it being paid for by those using it. There is no benefit or subsidy.

What you want is a parking subsidy for people who don't use parking. Which is bizarre. So say you want a transport subsidy. Then everyone should get it, including drivers. But that has YOU outraged no one else. No one else has a problem for transport being subsidized for frequent/long term patients of the hospital.

You hadn't mentioned public transport on this thread until I brought it up, so you don't really have much credibility to pretend to be an advocate for PT users now.

If the money for car park facility improvements isn't going to come from the hospital budget, where do you think it is going to come from? Is the parking fairy going to fly down and wave her magic wand to upgrade the facilities to the fancy ones that folk here seem to want without anyone actually paying for them?

Vast profits? Really? How vast is vast? What's your source for the internal financial analysis of a private company?

You can of course choose to outsource car park facility improvements to the FM company if you like, but that doesn't make money appear out of nowhere. It still has to be paid somewhere, either coming out additional fees paid to the FM company by the hospital, or paid by customers to the FM company (which would otherwise be part of the fee paid back to the hospital). Money doesn't come out of nowhere.

Dublin isn't the only city of course. There is indeed higher car ownership outside of Dublin, but it IS still literally a choice made - a choice to prioritise spending on a vehicle rather than anything else. But most people do live in cities and large towns, and most of them have other options for getting to hospitals.

And there's the oul strawman arguments again, making up claims that no-one actually made so you can find something to complain about.