Clampers apologise after boy’s trip to hospital delayed

A CLAMPING company has apologised to a driver for failing to release his car when he was attempting to bring his 11-year-old son to hospital for urgent tests.

Control Plus managing director Neil Cunningham said the firm had launched an internal review of the incident, which occurred outside a doctor’s surgery in The Crescent area of Galway on Saturday. The parking attendant primarily involved has been consigned to office duties until the review is completed.

The incident occurred after local man Michael Mannion brought two of his children to the surgery at 8.45am on Saturday. One child, Glenn, was displaying symptoms of meningitis, and the doctor instructed Mr Mannion to bring him immediately to University College Hospital, five minutes away by car.

However, both the doctor and Mr Mannion had parked their cars in disabled bays, as these spaces were nearest to the surgery, and they emerged just before 9am to find the cars clamped. The doctor contacted Control Plus, and the two-man team which had clamped the cars returned.

Mr Mannion then explained to one of the attendants that, because of his son’s condition, he had rushed from his house to the surgery without money.

But the attendant refused to take off the clamp until the fine was paid, despite pleas by the doctor and a garda who was called to the scene that it was a genuine medical emergency.

Eventually, the garda paid Mr Mannion’s fine with his own credit card. The doctor paid her own. Speaking on RTÉ Radio yesterday, Mr Mannion said the attendant then “processed the paperwork, rather than taking off the clamp first”.

It was after 9.30am, he said, before he made it to the hospital with Glenn, who did not have meningitis as originally feared.

Yesterday, Mr Cunningham apologised for the incident, attributing it to “an error of judgment on (the part) of our parking attendants on scene. They misjudged the seriousness of the situation... and our people are seriously embarrassed,” he said. “Once it was presented that it was an emergency situation and that child had to be brought to casualty, that (should have been) enough to get the clamp to be removed.”

He denied, however, that the attendants had not been trained properly, saying they were an experienced team.

“Those cars were clamped in good faith. They had no idea of the circumstances behind where those people were or what was happening regarding those cars and why they were in those disabled bays.”