Connolly Hospital Clamping – More antisocial behaviour

Yesterday I finshed work at Connolly Hospital having had a very rewarding meeting wigth Joe Feely, the Laboratory Manager who is a great asset to the hospital. The hospital manager Shay Smyth is retiring and I wish him a long and happy retirement. He played a constructive part in the hospital development obvious to even the most unobservant visitor.

However, he was involved in the clamping fiasco where consultants and nurses have had their cars clamped by the jealots in their yellow cars. For a hospital in a semirural location, such aggressive parking policies are anti-social. Word in the corridors at the hospital is that car parking is taking in €15,000 per week so they will be reluctant to change their cash cow. I know that RCSI Professor Tom Walsh and A&E consultant Joe McKeever have been clamped. I spoke to one occupant of a clamper van and asked him to free Tom Walsh. He said that he was only following orders – another Nuremburg defence!

To show you the landscape at the centre for older people at Unit 4, I took a few pictures and you can get the flavour of the administration that approves this activity. I don’t dislike them. I just cannot stand them!

The building of housing units on the campus while the Blanchardstown Regional Technical College is some distance away shows the myopia and lack of vision of the FF government. There still is the opportunity to site a major biomedical sciences campus at Connolly hospital. I opposed the sale of the land at the time and still think that I was right.