Home / Advice / Galway City — 5-Digit FCN Reference Beginning '5' or '1' (Post-5-June-2025)

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Galway City — 5-Digit FCN Reference Beginning '5' or '1' (Post-5-June-2025)

For Galway City Council FCNs issued on or after 5 June 2025 (the date the Giant Leap Traffic Fines operator started), the reference is a 5-digit number beginning with 5 or 1. Any FCN dated on/after 5 June 2025 not conforming to that format is structurally defective.

Legal basis

Galway City Council published parking-fines procedure; Road Traffic Act 2010 s.35 (prescribed form).

How to identify this in your case

Galway City FCN dated on/after 5 June 2025 where the reference is not 5 digits, or does not start with 5 or 1.

Sample appeal wording

Before you send this

Deadline. A late submission can be turned down without your argument being read. Check your notice for the deadline and how it is counted.
Paying may end it. Paying can count as accepting the notice and can close a challenge already under way. Part-paying or acknowledging an old debt can also revive a time limit that had expired.
The amount can change. Check what happens to the sum if you challenge — it may be held, re-offered lower, or keep rising, and fees or enforcement can continue meanwhile.
Use the official route. Use the method, recipient and form your notice specifies, with any reference, evidence and signature it asks for. Sent elsewhere, it may not count.
Only say what is true. Do not copy any statement of fact unless it is true for you, and check the legal point still applies. Delete what does not fit. It may be treated as your statement.
Careful what you volunteer. Avoid unnecessary admissions — naming the driver or accepting responsibility can remove arguments. But answer anything you are legally required to answer, and do include the evidence your ground needs.
Keep the record. Keep what you sent, the attachments, any receipt, and the reply. Note the next deadline.

Sample wording to adapt and send yourself — it may not fit your notice or the stage you are at. Replace the bracketed prompts with your own details; leave any case citation as it is.

Galway City Council publishes the standard FCN reference format (for fines issued on or after 5 June 2025) as a 5-digit number beginning with 5 or 1. The reference on the notice served on me ([ref]) does not conform. The notice is not in the prescribed form.

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Sources

https://www.galwaycity.ie/services/roads-and-transport/roads-and-transport-services/parking-fines