It is easier to book a Ryanair flight than pay for parking in Galway City, a meeting of the Council was told on Monday.

Despite introducing a ‘grace period’ during which tickets would not be issued lasting until Monday next, January 20, the Council was still insisting this week that parking must be paid for — penalising those who do pay, while having no deterrent for those who do not.

Parking meters in the city have been out of order since January 8 and the Council is locked in a High Court dispute with their former operator, UTS, whose spokesperson told the Galway City Tribune last week that “there was no need for this disruption”.

“A complete shambles” is how Cllr Mike Cubbard (Ind) described the situation, telling the meeting that the Council’s communications with councillors and the public were only adding to the confusion.

“There is a grace period where no fines are to be issued, an email sent to councillors says payment for parking is still required . . . that completely contradicts the grace period,” said Cllr Cubbard.

Chief Executive Leonard Cleary told the meeting said that parking bylaws remained in place and, as a result, people were expected to pay for parking — and fines would be issued from January 20 for non-payment.

“We do have a facility to have a grace period around fines,” he said, adding that the Council was working to find a solution to the problem.

Cllr Cubbard said this was not a “cashless society” and if somebody was willing to pay cash but could not, and was issued with a ticket, he expected that they would appeal any ticket that was issued beyond January 20.

“Dealing with those appeals is going to waste more resources,” he said, adding that he expected there would be court challenges from members of the public who could legitimately claim they were walking to a far-away shop to pay for parking when a ticket was put on their car.

Following a tendering process and the appointment of a new contractor to operate the city’s public parking, the Council had instructed UTS to end its maintenance of the machines on January 7.

However, the Council had expected that this would only impact card payments – only realising on January 8 that the machines no longer accepted cash payments either.

The Council has pasted signage all over the defunct machines, advising anybody wishing to pay with cash or card to visit a shop with a Payzone facility, call a number to pay or download the Council’s recently launched app.