Hospital parking: Time to put patients first

It is hard enough to cope with the worry of having a sick family member or loved one in hospital without the added stress of exorbitant car parking charges while visiting.

Over €19m in parking charges was generated by hospitals last year and some of those charges may be warranted. However, families of seriously ill and long-stay patients pay far more than their fair share. It isn’t just visitors who are overburdened, either.

Cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy and radiotherapy will often need to make frequent trips to hospital and are forced to pay unfair charges while receiving vital, lifesaving treatments.

When the issue arose in Britain in 2014, health secretary Jeremy Hunt ordered hospitals to provide free or greatly reduced parking charges for certain categories of patients and visitors, saying: “Patients and families shouldn’t have to deal with the added stress of unfair parking charges.”

That was a compassionate move that Health Minister Simon Harris should emulate instead of accepting the HSE’s solution which is merely to put a daily cap on charges.

“Hospitals which charge parking fees are very cognisant of the financial implications of parking costs for patients and their families particularly those with long-term illnesses,” he told the Dáil. That is clearly not the case and it is time for the minister to instruct those hospitals to put their patients before their bank balance.