‘I should not have to worry about this as a cancer patient’ – vulnerable patients paying up to €17 a day for hospital car parking

by Banania2020

24 comments

  1. Same for staff. We have to hike miles from off site parking facilities. These facilities are aimed towards staff with daytime 9-5 or shift hours. So if yiu work an oncall system, you might find youraelf trekking to your car for 30 minutes at 3am in the morning.

  2. With respect she’s probably got bigger things to worry about over €17 a day on parking.

  3. Been there, done that. Spent 6 years in hospitals with my husband that had cancer, to pay an insane amount parking fees… we spent a fortune on it, that could have been spent on making him more comfortable ( whether it would be warm clothes, mental health help or a take out that he would enjoy when he felt like eating). Treatments are free (ish) but cancer makes you poor.

  4. Same for everything up there. You can be in watching a loved one die and you are hit with these charges. It’s ghoulish.

  5. It’s such a difficult time, the parking charges just add on a load of unnecessary worry.
    When my cousin was dying the hospital gave her parents a voucher that reduced parking I think from about 20 a day to 5, it helped financially but it also helped them feel that someone was looking out for them and recognized this was a really bad situation.
    I’ve also generally seen the parking barriers off at night for people coming into a&e not having to pay overnight parking charges.
    It wouldn’t take much to help the vulnerable patients and show a bit of empathy and connection at a difficult time.

  6. It’s insane that in this day and age there aren’t underground parking facilities at hospitals. Oh it’s Ireland . completely normal

  7. Yet if you ate a private patient you get free parking at St Vincent cancer care.

  9. There is a certain private hospital I work in that has recently outcast the *entire* staff parking lot to make way for more patient/visitor parking.

    Mind you, our department alone (before costs and the sort) bring in about 19 million a year.

    The new parking available for visitors and patients? Not renovated, not painted over, still a fucking shithole in the back of the grounds, 3 minutes walk from the main entrance? *You’re paying to stay there*.

    After 9 months of consultations, and against the will of every single member of staff who ever stood up at the fake as can fucking be “town hall meetings”, they still kicked the staff out of the grounds.

    If your shift starts at 9, you better show up at 7 for a spot that’s *only* 4 minutes away. If you’re *only* 70 minutes early for your shift, well at least you dodged the school traffic so now you can steal their drop off point and still be a 10-15 minute walk from the nearest gate.

    All of that was just to get off the chest as Christmas into new years is a rough spot now, as we watch private become more and more open in terms of working hours because there’s profit to be had, and we always get shafted on about a 10 days notice to Christmas, but what I’m saying is this article won’t matter, none of it matters, private and public are morphing into one incestuous bastard that only cares about the bottom line and what the analysts and private consultancy firms think they can milk out of you.

  10. I have to say that St James have an excellent scheme if you are in for Chemo or blood transfusions on a regular basis. Parking fee was capped at €4 a day max. Didn’t apply to visitors though

  12. HSE using all their brain with the childrens hospital. Build it with no parking to avoid this issue.

  13. I hope there’s a special place in hell for the people who make patients pay for hospital parking. 

  15. There should be no charge for parking in hospitals. It’s fucking WILD we have accepted paying parking fees

  16. This isn’t as easy to solve as many commenters here are making out. If there was no parking charges at all we’d inevitably have threads full of people complaining how impossible it is to get parking! Some sort of validation system for certain categories of patients may work but then of course we’d have people moaning that their ailment doesn’t get them parking etc…

  17. Why just cancer? Are other life threatening conditions not just as costly?

  19. My dad had treatment in Belfast and they have patients free parking. Only visitors had to pay

  20. Government could fix this in a flash. But if it’s their pals that are racking it in there’ll be no change any time soon.

  21. When my mother was dying in CUH, we would try and work in shifts, so that someone would be with her. She was there for ten weeks. It would have been wonderful if we could have had at least one car parked for free or for a heavily discounted rate per patient.  I was at least lucky enough not having to decide to spend time with my mother or to keep moving the car or cut my visit short due to financial pressure. 

  22. Don’t know how true (or relevant)it was but I remember hearing years ago that the carparks were owned by the company managing the senior staff pensions.

  23. I hear you. We paid a fortune around the matter when my nan was sick. The night she died, I went out to the car to update the ticket. Car was clamped.

  24. Beacon hospital has to be one of the worst for it. They don’t even have a drop off-pick up space! Or any grace period…

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