“Where Are People Supposed to Go?” - Maynooth’s Parking Problem
In September 2022, a petition emerged on Change.org titled Belligerent clamping in Maynooth University. It received just over 2,400 signatures and reflected growing frustration with parking provision on campus, alongside concerns about the use of clamping enforcement operated in partnership with private contractor APCOA. The petition called for the university to “suspend all clamping” in “an already economically challenging time.”
Bar one update shortly after its launch, it has since remained inactive, but the issues it raised remain far from irrelevant. According to figures provided by Maynooth University’s Commuting Office in December 2025, there are approximately 2,199 parking spaces available on campus, including overflow provision. Of these, around 1,734 are designated for students. This represents the total physical capacity of the system at any given time, rather than guaranteed availability during peak arrival periods.
A 2025 MU Smarter Travel survey found that 29% of students commute via single-occupancy vehicles, with a further 9% commuting via carpooling. Applied to a student population of roughly 17,000, this suggests that approximately 6,000 students use a car in some form to commute. While this is an estimate based on self-reported data, it indicates that demand for parking likely exceeds the number of available spaces, particularly when arrival times are concentrated around morning lecture periods.
However, parking demand is not simply a question of total users versus total spaces, but of timing. As most students arrive for lectures within similar windows of time in the morning, pressure is concentrated into short peak periods. It is during these intervals that shortages are most visible, with students reporting difficulty securing legal parking spaces on campus. Some report missing classes, or simply giving up after lengthy searches.
When on-campus parking is full, students may find themselves being pushed into surrounding areas, including nearby housing estates and along the Kilcock Road. These informal, often illegal, spillover areas are subject to parking enforcement measures, including clamping. Students who are clamped must either pay a release fee or attempt to appeal through APCOA’s process. While clamping is intended to deter unsafe or unauthorised parking, it also functions as part of the wider system managing overflow caused by limited campus capacity.
Former student Ronan O'Donnell created the aforementioned 2022 petition, and graduated from Maynooth University in 2023. Although noting that he "didn't drive at the time," the clamping of a friend's car led him to grow frustrated with parking services and enforcement campuses on and around campus, encouraging him to start the petition.
He was not alone in this concern. One third year student, who wishes to remain anonymous, described being clamped on their second day of university after a forty-minute commute from Offaly. Since then, they say the “anxiety” surrounding a potential clamping fine has significantly shaped their daily routine. They now leave home at 7:45AM to arrive on campus by 8:30, regardless of when their classes begin, even on days when lectures do not start until 2PM. This results in long, fragmented days and extended commuting time.
Concerns have also been raised at an institutional level. Maynooth University’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee for the Arts and Humanities Faculty noted that parking shortages can disproportionately affect students and staff with childcare responsibilities. As aforementioned early morning hours, when most spaces are available, coincide with school drop-off times, these students are at a greater risk of being unable to access parking, potentially raising issues of indirect discrimination.
In an email to Silver Hand Journal in January 2026, the committee stated the following:
“The issue of parking (although not clamping in particular) had been raised and discussed at the Faculty EDI committee. Colleagues had noted that there is a severe shortage of parking spaces and that this is very challenging for everyone. However, there is an additional burden for people, both staff and students, who need to drop off children in the morning before coming to campus which in practice means they may not be able to get to campus early enough to secure parking.”
Taken together, the figures and experiences suggest a structural dissonance between the number of students relying on cars and the practical capacity of the campus parking system during peak hours. So, what can be done? Students may find it easy to point fingers at the Students’ Union, or even the University itself, but blame may instead lie with policy at both county and national levels.
The email from the Arts and Humanities Faculty EDI Committee went on to further state:
“The committee followed up with Estates to see if more parking will be made available in future, but we were informed that because national plans are to reduce dependence on cars there would not be planning support for increasing parking … [we understand that] planning permission remains a substantial barrier for more parking.”
Under the state’s 2024 Climate Action mandate, universities in areas “with access to public transportation” were explicitly asked to reduce car dependency and usage among staff and students. According to an RTE DriveTime report at the time, the further and higher level education sectors account for the third-biggest level of carbon emissions, and this measure was designed to reduce the environmental impact of commuter road travel.
However, many students cannot access viable public transport, as covered in a recent Silver Hand Journal piece. Additionally, amid the ongoing national housing crisis, local accommodation has become a rare luxury, and also not an option for the majority of students. For them, commuting is less a choice, and more a necessity.
In other words, students are being asked to operate within a system that simultaneously depends on car travel, but restricts the infrastructure needed to support it. That contradiction is not abstract. It is lived by many daily; manifesting as missed lectures, early morning departures, hours lost to commuting routines structured around uncertainty, and the constant financial risk of enforcement measures.
One begins to question the value that the University, government policymakers, and private clamping companies such as APCOA place on students’ education, financial pressures and academic wellbeing, only exacerbated by threats of attendance penalties and clamping fees. Many students may be inclined to agree that money spent on contracting APCOA’s services could be better invested in expanding parking provision for those who pay to access campus facilities annually. In the four years since O’Donnell’s petition, thousands of students have completed full degree programmes with little to no progress on parking during their entire time at the university.
At some point, the burden of adaptation cannot continue to fall solely on students seeking to gain education. If national climate policy prioritises reduced car dependency on the basis of climate action, then credible alternatives, such as reliable public transport links, and expanded commuter infrastructure, must be provided, and soon.
Until that happens, parking at Maynooth University will remain what it increasingly is; and has been. Not simply a logistical inconvenience, but a structural barrier shaping who can access education comfortably, and at what cost.
Kildare County Council were contacted regarding its exact policy and plans for parking facilities at Maynooth University but did not respond to requests for comment.
