Friday, 24 June 2022 | 16.1°C Belfast
Daisy Hill Hospital. Photo: Liam McBurney/PA Wire
A health trust has hit out after a dissident republican group offered to cut wheel clamps off cars parked at Daisy Hill hospital if contacted by vehicle owners.
S outhern Health Trust said enforcement was only used as a “last resort” on repeat offenders who parked in disabled spaces without a blue badge, or were blocking vital services.
Saoradh said it followed four van-loads of men from a private company arriving at the hospital car park in Newry, Co Armagh earlier yesterday.
The group - often described as the political wing of the New IRA - said the private company workers began clamping cars belonging to visitors, patients and staff.
Speaking from Saoradh’s Newry office, activist Anthony Coyle said: “This is a disgraceful attack on frontline workers and the vulnerable and it won’t be tolerated.
“Staff, patients and visitors alike have been receiving fines in the past few weeks and now a private company has resorted to clamping vehicles.
“Some of the staff, including nurses and doctors, work long hours helping those in need. Likewise patients attending for treatment and visitors are also being targeted.
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“The last thing they need is to find their vehicle clamped after a long tiring shift.
“This is an attack on healthcare workers and those most in need. Saoradh call on the Southern Trust to bring this disgraceful treatment to an end.”
Coyle concluded by saying Saoradh would remove the clamps if contacted.
The Southern Health Trust said it is “absolutely vital that we can manage traffic flow on our very busy hospital sites and ensure that emergency and other essential vehicles have access at all times”.
“The vast majority of people park their cars responsibly on our hospital sites and where appropriate pay the pay and display charge,” they said.
"Car parking enforcement is only applied to cars parked in disabled spaces without a blue badge or those blocking vital emergency or maintenance access or in a pay and display space without paying.
“Clamping on our sites is exceptionally rare and is only used as a last resort when someone has parked three times or more inappropriately. Unfortunately, this action was taken today in relation to two cars on the Daisy Hill Hospital site.
“Car parking enforcement is necessary to deter people from parking inappropriately and to provide a safer, more accessible environment for everyone using our hospitals. We ask for the support of staff, patients and visitors in helping to make the best use of car parking around our sites.
“Whilst the majority of parking is free of charge on both sites, we encourage staff to use the car parks further away from the main buildings, leaving those spaces closer to the hospitals for patients.”
It isn’t the first republicans have offered such a ‘service’.
In November 2020, republicans in west Belfast also said that they would remove wheel clamps attached to the cars of Royal Victoria Hospital staff.
At the time, the Irish Republican Socialist Party - the political wing of the INLA - also posted a photograph on its website of an angle grinder which it said it had acquired to remove the clamps.
Sinn Fein MLA Gerry Kelly was at the centre of controversy two years ago after removing a wheel clamp attached to his car outside a city centre gym.
Video footage showed him working at the clamp with borrowed bolt-cutters.
He later paid a £100 fine and a further £50 for the damage done to the clamp belonging to the company involved.
The PSNI and the Southern Trust, which operates Daisy Hill hospital, have been contacted.
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