The DUN Laoghaire Business Association has sought an urgent meeting with the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, over the introduction of wheel-clamping to the area.
"There will be no clampers in Dun Laoghaire as far as we are concerned," the secretary of the business association, Mr Breasal O Caollai, warned yesterday, confirming that he had written to Mr O'Donoghue.
The business association is opposed to the decision to transfer the borough's 12 traffic wardens to Dublin Corporation's traffic department.
In common with the other two local authorities in Co Dublin, Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown is to lose its traffic wardens on April 12th. Whether clampers will replace them or not is unclear, for neither the local Garda nor Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown Council has been consulted about the move.
"Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown know nothing more about it than we've read in The Irish Times," the senior administrative officer for traffic, Mr David Guckian, said.
Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown has 12 of the 28 traffic wardens currently operating in Co Dublin. Other urban centres affected will include Swords, Malahide, Blanchardstown, Tallaght and Clondalkin.
The transfer of the wardens to Dublin Corporation's payroll is due to take place on April 12th, but the wardens are refusing to move without more information on their new jobs.
Last Friday the corporation told their unions that only 31 of the 146 traffic wardens currently deployed in Dublin city and county would be retained in their present role. The rest would be offered early retirement or redeployment as manual operatives.
Yesterday a SIPTU official, Mr Des Hughes, said that there was no question of his union balloting members on "a pig in a poke". Far more information was needed.
Mr O Caollai said: "We would find ourselves in great sympathy with the traffic wardens. They are not the only ones being messed around and dictated to.
"We have a very good traffic management system in Dun Laoghaire and we are calling on the Minister to defer the transfer until we have had an opportunity to discuss alternatives."
He said local traders were taking the situation very seriously. Ten years ago, when disc parking was introduced without consultation, local firms suffered a 40 per cent drop in business.
At a meeting in Dun Laoghaire on February 17th, the DLBA and representatives of seven local residents' associations agreed to call for a new "pay and display" system, incorporating a "first hour free parking" element.
An IMPACT member, Ms Liz Daly, who is a spokeswoman for the traffic wardens, said that the union was still seeking meetings with officials to find out what was happening. She said tickets for new on-the-spot fines for a wide variety of offences, ranging from littering to bald tyres, had been distributed to Garda stations in Dublin in the past few days, but it was unclear who would be issuing them.