DUBLIN City Council probably doesn't know what it has let itself in for. City fathers plan to double residential parking charges for SUVs and people-carriers by this June, and the council has now entered a threemonth period of public consultation on its proposed new by-laws.

But SUVs and people carriers inspire a heated and complicated debate, as well as a lot of aggression in other road users. Hugely high, dangerous, polluting, impossible for other motorists or pedestrians to see through - or even see around - SUVs are private tanks and drive most people wild.

Last Wednesday, in the fairly empty car park of Rathmines shopping centre, there were eight SUVs and three people-carriers at three o'clock in the afternoon. On Neville Road in nearby Rathgar, where a residential parking scheme is due to be introduced next month, one householder reckoned there were between 10 and 12 SUVs and people-carriers on a road of just 31 houses. There is one Smart car, with an 07 registration. On Templemore Avenue, at about 3.30 in the afternoon, there were five SUVs or people-carriers, in a road of 44 houses. Standing beside her Chrysler Voyager, Damhnait O'Loughlin explained that she had got her first people-carrier when she gave birth to her fourth child. "I don't understand people who have two children and have a people-carrier, " she said.

On Neville Road, Lori, who is a stay-at-home mum, said of the new regulations: "They seem silly to me. We're a onevehicle household. My husband gets the bus to work.

We have four children so it's necessary for me." She currently has a Toyota Picnic, and has had people-carriers since her twins, now 11, were born.

Recently, while planning a holiday in Spain, she discovered that it was Euro200 cheaper to hire two small cars for the holiday than to rent a seven-seater. "We may get two smaller cars here instead, " she said.

In Glasnevin, on Thursday morning, there were six SUVs on Cliftonville Road, out of about 25 cars. In Phibsboro, both Munster Street and Leinster Street had a handful each, while the much longer Shandon Park had none. There were roadworks on Shandon Park, but no roadworks on Shandon Crescent, just off it, where there were about half a dozen SUVs. SUV and people-carrier ownership is partly dictated by age.

There has been a rather feeble attempt to portray the council's move as anti-family.

(The unintentional implication being that people who own average-sized cars do not have families. ) The owners of people-carriers (overwhelmingly parents) are distancing themselves from the single owners of SUVs and jeeps.

"I need it for work, " said one landscape gardener. "For God's sake, it's not all yummy mummies." Ninety per cent of Pajeros, the biggest-selling SUV in Ireland, are sold as commercial vehicles.

And here I had better come clean and say that, although I would like to see all SUVs either banned or burned and people-carriers trebled in price, I have to admit that my immediate family, where my views are well-known and absolutely ignored, contains one SUV owner and a peoplecarrier devotee. And that's not counting my cousin's people-carrier. Or the Land Rover of one of my best friends (for God's sake). Perhaps fortunately, Ireland is too small a country for us to live in lifestyle ghettoes, so we'd better find the Middle Way on this one fast.

Dublin city councillor Mary Frehill, who represents Dublin 6 - the SUV capital of Ireland - says, on her website, the council's initiative was "getting a mixed reaction."

Despite arguments about parking and driving style, "I would prefer if they focused on carbon emissions."

On Monday, Kilian Doyle of the Irish Times wrote in its motoring supplement that a lot of SUV drivers are "bullies? obnoxious thugs and thugettes" - and this in a section of the paper that was promoting a new rash of SUVs. Not every SUV driver is as honest as the man who rang Brenda Power's radio show Your Call on Newstalk last week to say he drove his SUV for pure pleasure, and relished the disapproval.

The council's new rules follow similar - often stricter - measures in other cities, notably London and Paris.

They are aimed at vehicles with an engine capacity of over 2,000cc. The average family car has a capacity of 1,600cc. The increased charges cover residential parking permits, where motorists with no garages pay to park outside their homes in the Dublin City Council area.

"It's unfair that a car the size of a small bus should be charged at the same rate as a Smart car, " says Tim O'Sullivan, executive manager of the council's roads and traffic department.

"I've no problem with SUVs down the country." The council wants to encourage smaller cars for city use. Tim O'Sullivan points out that, in 2003, there were 19,000 vehicles of 2,000cc in the state. In 2005, there were 26,000.

It is here that the peoplecarriers could do well. Brenda Power, the mother of five children, doesn't approve of SUVs in town - "just vulgar, " she says - but points out that her seven-seater people carrier is a 1.9-litre vehicle and so won't be hit by the new charges.

The whole initiative is described by Tim O'Sullivan as "just a nudge." The motor industry is waiting for new vehicle registration tax guidelines to be brought in next year - pretty well guaranteed to hit the SUV owner.

Kilian Doyle is not optimistic. "They can afford it, " he wrote. "They wouldn't be driving the things if they couldn't. If anything, paying more tax will just reinforce their view that they own the road."