Clear national guidelines must be established
Local Fianna Fáil TD, John Curran says that after calling on the Minister for Health and HSE to introduce national guidelines to regulate car parking fees in hospitals across the country, particularly city based hospitals; he now welcomes the Minister’s move to carry out a review of hospital car parking charges for patients who require long-term care.
Commenting on the Minister’s recent announcement, Deputy Curran said; “I very much welcome the move to carry out a review of hospital car parking charges across the country.
Since the Irish Cancer Society’s ‘Park the Charges‘ report revealed that cancer patients could be paying up to €63 a week in car parking charges, I have been calling for this for some time now.
While I welcome the report and I hope it it completed quickly and without delay the priority and goal of this review must be to introduce clear national guidelines that result in a more compassionate and fairer approach to parking charges that will see the financial burden reduces on patients who are visiting hospitals most frequently and for longer periods of time.
“Car parking charges represent a huge cost for many cancer patients undergoing treatment at a time of complex need and financial pressure. These are people that are already facing real hardship with additional costs and large drops in income; extortionate car parking fees further add to this.
“Should hospitals such as Tallaght adopt these guidelines and change their pricing policy for cancer patients, it will no doubt alleviate some of the difficulty with managing a long-term and serious illness.”
