'It was so stressful' - cancer patient Tara Doonan on being clamped while having treatment

Tara Doonan, from Killeshandra, Co Cavan recalled that she was clamped outside the Mater Hospital in Dublin after she fell asleep during a delayed appointment. She did not get to top up her parking ticket in time and you could only pay for three hours, at a time. 

"I had to pay €125 to get it released. It was so stressful. It was the last thing I needed after coming out of treatment," Ms Doonan told RTÉ's 'The Complaints Bureau' consumer show. 

However, despite providing a letter from the ward manager explaining the situation, the National Transport Authority (NTA) did not uphold her appeal. She had to pay the €125 fine.

The RTÉ show found that the Mater Hospital’s car park is the most expensive in the country at €3.20 an hour, which is capped at €15 a day. It is one of 10 hospitals around the country that do not offer any concessionary parking to cancer patients.

Despite providing a letter from the ward manager in the hospital explaining how she fell asleep during cancer treatment, both Dublin Street Parking Services and the National Transport Authority did not uphold her clamping appeal https://t.co/MAjc5ZQIGN

— Amy Molloy (@AmyMolloyIndo) April 19, 2024

In the summer of 2022, 36 year old Tara was diagnosed with Invasive Ductal Carcinoma, a type of breast cancer.

"I had no symptoms at all, bar finding a lump one evening when I removed my bra. It was quite a large lump and breast cancer immediately came into my head, followed quickly by ‘I’m too young to get cancer, it must be a cyst or hormonal’. The next week, my husband noticed it too, so I went to my GP. She reassured me that it felt fibrous and was unlikely to be anything sinister, but referred me for a triple assessment in August to confirm. I was so sure it would just be a cyst that needed to be drained and nothing else, so we naively booked a night away in a hotel for the appointment in Dublin to celebrate".

After undergoing an ultrasound, mammogram and biopsy, Tara was told by her consultant that they were highly suspicious it was breast cancer, but they’d need to wait for the biopsy results to come back.

"Those two weeks waiting for the results were terrifying. I didn’t know what type of breast cancer it could be. Once they confirmed it was cancer, they did an MRI and CT scan, and thankfully they told me the cancer hadn’t spread.

"We had been trying to start a family for 4 years before my diagnosis, so to then find out I had cancer was a real kick in the teeth, to put it mildly! My cancer wasn’t hormonal positive, so we were able to do one round of IVF before starting chemotherapy and we managed to freeze 4 embryos. I am afraid to hope that someday our dreams of becoming parents will come true," she said.

Tara’s treatment included 5 months of chemotherapy, a lumpectomy and 4 weeks of radiotherapy, which finished up in June 2023.

"When you get the diagnosis, you’re just in it and you’re surviving. You’re going from one appointment to the next and you’re not really thinking about much else or able to think about much else apart from just surviving and getting through it," she told RTÉ’s consumer show.

In a statement to The Complaints Bureau, the Mater Hospital said it did not get any money from the car park. It said the State did not fund the provision of an underground car park and Eccles Street Car Park Ltd, the company connected to the car park that is owned by the Mater, had to take out a significant loan to build one. The cash flow generated from the car park is used to pay off the loan, which means the Mater is unable to introduce concessionary parking for cancer patients.

"It was the last thing I need after coming out of a day in hospital getting treated for cancer"

Amy meets a young Cavan teacher who wants to see car parking charges at hospitals abolished for cancer patients.#TheComplaintsBureau | Thursdays at 7pm | @rteplayer pic.twitter.com/DnSumlNYhQ

— RTÉ One (@RTEOne) April 15, 2024

Car parking is an unavoidable cost that affects over 8 in 10 cancer patients. This rises to 9 in 10 families if a child is diagnosed with cancer, the Irish Cancer Society, who have been campaigning on the issue for a decade, says.

In the Programme for Government there is a commitment to: “Introduce a cap on the maximum daily charge for car parking for patients and visitors at all public hospitals, where possible. Introduce flexible passes in all public hospitals for patients and their families.”

"As it stands, there is no standardised approach to hospital parking and a lack of consistency in what cancer patients can expect to pay while they attend tests and treatment," an Irish Cancer Society spokesperson said.

"Not only is there a huge disparity in the actual charges applied, but also in the manner by which patients can access information about where concessions might exist in the first place. This is causing additional stress and anxiety to patients and their loved ones at a time when they are already vulnerable".

While some hospitals have abolished or reduce car-parking charges for cancer patients, this is not the case in every cancer-treating hospital

You can watch the episode of the RTÉ show 'The Complaints Bureau' here