Dublin authorities refuse responsibility for traffic wardens

Members of Dublin's local authorities have told the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, they don't want to accept control of Dublin's traffic warden service.

The Minister has proposed the passing of control of the Dublin service - numbering almost 150 wardens - to the Director of Traffic at Dublin Corporation.

However, a spokesman for the corporation told The Irish Times yesterday it has "no room or use for more than 30 of these" and added that if the service was to be devolved from the department, then the other local authorities would have to take the excess wardens.

But this suggestion too has been rejected by the Fine Gael spokesman on Traffic, Ms Olivia Mitchell TD, who is also a member of Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council.

Recalling a promise made last October by the Minister for the Environment and Local Government Mr Dempsey, that local authorities would not be asked to take on new responsibilities without additional funding, Ms Mitchell said the transfer would be resisted by the capital's local authorities.

"It isn't that we are not concerned about traffic but we feel that a new, flexible and multifunctional traffic and parking service should be introduced without delay," she said.

In describing "multi-functional", Ms Mitchell said that perhaps a new scooter-based warden system could assume responsibility for a number of functions, such as litter in addition to traffic.

"We certainly don't want to simple relieve the Minister for Justice of a service which is making a loss of over £2 million a year," she said.

Meanwhile, the traffic wardens have expressed their concerns about the move, raising a number of issues in relation to pay, conditions, status and redundancy.

A suggestion by Ms Mitchell that since the introduction of clamping, an average of just two tickets per warden were being written per day, could not be confirmed or denied by the Department of Justice yesterday.