Holidaymakers are abandoning their cars in local estates near Dublin Airport to avoid paying huge long-term parking fees.

On The Hard Shoulder this evening, locals in Swords said the situation was now an “absolute pain in the backside.”

They said passengers are parking up in local estates and then ordering taxis to the airport.

The problem is being blamed on soaring parking prices – with passengers being charged at least €40 a day to park at the airport.

“It’s an absolute pain in the backside apart from being dangerous,” one resident told Newstalk reporter Emma Tyrrell.

“If you live on these cul de sacs here, they’re parking on both sides of the road so you have to come out into the middle – and if there is somebody coming you can’t see it.

“Basically, you could find two or three cars parked there for two or three weeks. You know the difference because you know all the neighbour’s cars.

“I’m not saying there is a hundred of them but there could be five or six at a time.”

Parking

Another resident said things have “definitely gotten worse” in the past few months.

“There are regularly a couple of cars parked up there just at the end of our road,” he said.

“Along that road, there are two or three cars there for maybe a week, maybe a fortnight and then they’re gone.”

'Missing' spaces

Travel expert Eoghan Corry told The Hard Shoulder things won’t be improving until next year at the earliest.

“A lot will be solved when we get the 6,500 missing car park spaces - the ones we lost during COVID – back,” he said.

“They are privately owned. They used to be Quickpark out in Santry. They won’t be back for this summer, but they’ll likely be back in summer 2023 because that space will be coming to market probably around December.

“That would clear what is a huge looming problem for July and August – that spaces are booked out in the long-term car park.

“Everyone in Dublin Airport is telling people to try and use alternative transport, but the options on that are quite limited. We’re the only capital city in Europe without a metro to the airport.”

Refunds

Separately, Mr Corry said Dublin Airport has received 700 requests for refunds from “that terrible Sunday” three weeks ago where a lot of passengers missed their flights.

“There were a lot of figures floating around about 1,500 or 2,000 people who missed their flights,” he said. “Well in the end, Dublin Airport has received 700 requests for refunds.

“The first of those was paid two weeks ago. They are going through it, but it is a little bit lower than the numbers that were expected at the time and it doesn’t look like it will be hugely costly for the airport considering all the problems they have.”

You can listen back here.