Cork city manager Joe Gavin has defended the council's decision to make a €9 million sale of council property conditional on the provision of 120 car parking spaces for council staff. Cork City Council approved the sale late last year of Navigation House on Albert Quay in Cork city centre to property developer Owen O'Callaghan. He agreed to pay €9.2 million for the building on the two-acre site.
The deal was conditional on the developer agreeing to provide 120 parking spaces for council staff to replace free parking currently availed of by council staff at the Navigation House site.
However, Cork Green Party Senator Dan Boyle said the arrangement undermined the council's policy of encouraging people to leave their car at home and use public transport.
"It's ironic that Cork City Council operates a very successful park-and-ride service which they encourage the public to use, and yet here they are making provision for more than 100 car parking spaces for their own staff," said Mr Boyle.
"The park-and-ride is a very successful service run by the city council on a contract basis using Bus Éireann, and that's the model they should be developing rather than undermining that service with a development like this."
However, Mr Gavin defended the council's decision, saying the council was simply seeking to retain parking spaces already available to its staff.
"The car parking at Navigation House has been there for a number of years, and and all we are doing is replacing what's already there so we are not adding in any way to the number of car spaces or the number of cars coming there.
"We are strongly promoting car-pooling among staff, and we are also promoting the use of the park-and-ride - there's only a certain amount of car parking available there, 120 spaces, and that would only accommodate a fraction of the staff here."
Mr Gavin said while the city council promoted park-and-ride it had also made allowance for a certain number of car parking spaces with developments in or near the city centre for which it had granted planning permission.
O'Callaghan Properties offered the highest price for the Navigation House site when the council put it on the market after it transferred its planning department to its new civic offices on Anglesea Street.
A spokesman for O'Callaghan Properties said no decision had been taken yet as to what exactly would become of Navigation House, which is a listed building, and the adjacent land. However, it was most likely that it would be used for office development.
