Greystones Hosts S.O.S. For NCPS

It’s a heartbreaking sight to behold, and one that many Greystonians have to face each and every day.

A supposedly top-of-the-range, over-priced, money-grabbing car park that somehow looks like a bombed out backyard in a faraway, forgotten and Godforsaken land.

And yet this battered, tattered, water-logged shithole is right in the heart of Greystones.

Shocking. Altogether.

Clearly, the owners of this popular car park – nestled up against Greystones’ train station – have fallen on seriously hard times. How else to explain why this goldmine looks like it’s only just about survived a landmine…?

When you’ve got to pop on your frogsuit to punch the parking meter, and there are potholes big enough to lose a Micra in, the heart aches for the poor, cash-strapped company who clearly can’t afford a sturdy plank, or even a bucket of second-hand gravel.

We went and checked just how poor. In 2017, the Nationwide Controlled Parking Systems only managed to scrape together – brace yourselves – a measly €4.5m, their pre-tax profits rising a meagre 150% during those 12 months to just over €1m.

A meagre 150% rise! To over €1m in pre-tax profits! Is it any wonder that NCPS can’t afford basic ground repairs? And we ask you, should we Greystonians be so selfish as to think about ourselves – our car’s suspension, our wheels, the holes in our shoes – when these simple, possibly starving city folk are having to cope with such traumatic financial returns?

With this in mind, a benefit gig has been organised at The Hot Spot with an all-star line-up of local musicians pulling together to help our beleagured, besuited friends.

Under the banner of Baby, You Can Clamp My Car, on the night, The Brian Farrell Supergroup will deliver such hits as Skoda On The Water, Unchain My Car, The Ould Yellow Triangle, Ruby, Don’t Take Your LiteAce To Town and Stuck In The Puddle With You. The hope being that the good people of Greystones will dig deep to fill those buckets with some much-needed cash.

A handful of gravel will do either.

Whatever you can manage to spare, think of those poor Nationwide Controlled Parking Systems executives in your dreams tonight. It can’t be easy for them, trying to sleep with all that lumpy money under the mattress.