There are occasions in local government when an issue arrives so simple, so reasonable and so obviously beneficial that one wonders how anybody could possibly contrive to make it complicated. One hour of free parking in Clonmel is such an issue.
Clonmel town centre does not need another seminar on revitalisation. It does not require another glossy document explaining the importance of “footfall”, “vibrancy” or “town-centre regeneration”.
It needs people.
People walking along O’Connell Street. People shopping in Gladstone Street. People stopping for coffee, visiting a solicitor, buying a newspaper, collecting a prescription, getting a haircut, browsing a shop window and perhaps spending €20 somewhere they had not intended to spend it.
And before any of these miraculous economic activities can occur, those people have to get into the town.
For many of them, that means arriving by car.
This is why the argument over one hour’s free parking is much bigger than the price of a parking ticket.
It is an argument about whether we actually want people in Clonmel town centre.
Tipperary County Council’s original harmonised parking proposals placed Clonmel alone in Tier 1 and proposed just 20 minutes’ free parking in short and medium-stay areas. Twenty minutes.
One can only marvel at the optimism.
By the time somebody parks, obtains the required ticket or activates the parking app, walks into the centre of town and reaches a shop, a considerable portion of this magnificent gift of municipal generosity has already disappeared. Twenty minutes is not an invitation to shop. It is a countdown.
And Clonmel is not competing merely with Nenagh, Thurles or Carrick-on-Suir. It is competing with retail parks, shopping centres and online retailers. The motorist deciding where to spend money does not begin the morning by consulting the philosophical arguments for parking-space turnover.
They ask a much simpler question: Where is it easiest for me to shop?
Local representatives have been warning about precisely this problem. Cllr Richie Molloy called in 2025 for at least one hour’s free parking – preferably two – arguing that the existing half-hour arrangement at Mary Street was insufficient if the objective was to encourage people into town.
The argument has since moved considerably further.
When Tipperary County Council debated the new county parking bye-laws in July, an amendment allowing one-hour free parking was carried by 19 votes to 17, despite council management warning that widespread use of the provision could substantially reduce parking revenue.
There, in miniature, is the entire argument.
On one side is parking revenue. On the other is the question of what parking policy is actually for. A town centre is not a cash machine with white lines painted around it.
Parking policy should be a tool for managing a town, not an exercise in extracting the maximum possible sum from every motorist unfortunate enough to stop there.
The Council itself says its parking policy is not intended primarily to generate income, but to manage spaces effectively, improve turnover and support town-centre activity. Excellent.
Then let us take that principle seriously.
If the purpose is to support town-centre activity, give people a reasonable opportunity to create some.
An hour is hardly an invitation to abandon a Ford Focus indefinitely outside the Main Guard and establish hereditary rights over the parking space.
It is sixty minutes. Enough time to buy a few things. Enough time to visit a café. Enough time to conduct a little business. Enough time, perhaps, for someone who intended to make one purchase to make three. That is how town centres function. And the timing could hardly be more important.
Clonmel’s new Business Improvement District (BIDS) has explicitly identified increasing footfall, reducing vacancy, supporting businesses and attracting investment among its priorities.
We therefore arrive at a rather absurd possibility.
On one hand, enormous effort is being devoted to bringing people back into Clonmel.
On the other, we continue debating whether motorists might be permitted to leave their cars for sixty minutes without paying for the privilege.
Government at its least impressive frequently possesses this talent: spending considerable amounts attempting to solve a problem while stubbornly preserving the smaller obstacles that helped create it.
THE TEST FOR OUR COUNCILLORS
The question will ultimately come down to Clonmel’s elected representatives and the decisions they make about parking arrangements locally.
And when that moment comes, there should be no hiding place in abstention.
An abstention is perfectly legitimate parliamentary machinery when a representative genuinely lacks sufficient information or has a conflict that prevents participation.
But on a straightforward policy question affecting the future of Clonmel town centre, an unexplained abstention deserves scrutiny every bit as much as a Yes or a No.
Councillors are elected to make decisions.
That occasionally involves the occupational hazard of having one’s name attached to them.
If a councillor believes an hour’s free parking would damage Clonmel, then vote against it and explain why. If a councillor believes the loss of parking revenue outweighs the potential benefit to traders and shoppers, say so plainly. If there is compelling evidence that twenty minutes will do more for Clonmel than sixty, produce it and let the public examine it. That is democracy.
What should not satisfy anybody is political camouflage – sympathy for the proposal in conversation, enthusiasm for town-centre regeneration in speeches, and then reluctance when a decision has to be recorded. The same applies to anyone voting against the hour.
A No vote is not something for which a councillor should be abused or personally attacked. But it is something for which he or she should be expected to provide a convincing public argument.
Because the people entitled to hear that argument include the shopkeeper opening the door every morning, the café owner paying wages, the small business paying commercial rates and the property owner staring at another empty unit.
They have heard enough about revitalising Clonmel.
They are entitled to ask what is actually being done to make visiting Clonmel easier.
WHAT IS A TOWN CENTRE FOR?
There is a peculiar bureaucratic instinct to measure what can easily be counted. Parking revenue can be counted. The euro put into a machine is visible.
What is harder to count is the coffee that wasn’t bought because somebody didn’t stop; the shoes purchased elsewhere; the customer who went to a retail park; the person who ordered online rather than bothering with the town; or the casual shopper who might have wandered into three businesses after coming into Clonmel for one errand. Those losses never appear neatly on a parking-revenue spreadsheet.
They are nevertheless real.
The Council has also proposed returning a proportion of parking income to towns for enhancement projects. That is a legitimate argument on the other side of this debate and should not simply be dismissed. But there is little virtue in beautifying a town centre if policies simultaneously make visiting it less attractive.
Clonmel does not need charity. It needs a fair chance to compete. Nobody seriously suggests that an hour’s free parking will miraculously cure vacancy, restore every lost retailer or transform the fortunes of the town overnight. Anyone making that claim would be selling snake oil by the litre.
But successful town centres are rarely rescued by one enormous gesture.
They recover through dozens of sensible decisions that remove obstacles and give people reasons to return.
One hour’s free parking is one of them. It says: Come into Clonmel. Park the car. Have a look around. Spend some time here. That is not radical economics. It is common sense.
And if Clonmel’s councillors are asked to decide whether their town should avail of the one-hour provision, voters should pay attention not merely to the outcome but to how each representative votes.
Those voting for it can explain why they believe it will help.
Those voting against it should explain why they believe it will not.
And anybody contemplating an abstention without a compelling reason should ask themselves the simplest question of all: If an elected representative cannot take a position on something as straightforward as giving people an hour to come into Clonmel and support its businesses, precisely what issue are they waiting to take a position on?
Clonmel has spent long enough discussing how to bring life back into its centre.
Give people the hour. Then give the town the opportunity to prove what it can do with it.