A clamper attacked by an irate motorist with a hammer is fighting for his life in hospital this weekend. George Pista, a Romanian national living in Dublin, was savagely assaulted in a Dublin car park last Saturday night.

His family has been contacted by the Romanian embassy and he remains in a critical condition in Beaumont Hospital.

A spokesperson for his firm, National Controlled Parking Systems (NCPS), was unavailable for comment last week, although physical assaults on clamper staff are said to be extremely rare occurrences.

Speaking to the Sunday Tribune, a spokesman for Dublin Street Parking Services (DSPS) – which operates a similar service on behalf of Dublin City Council – said that such confrontations are not common and that staff are well trained in dealing with aggravation.

"From our point of view all our guys go through conflict management training," he said. "They are very well equipped to handle most incidents on the street. Having said that we do get abuse on a daily basis; it tends to be from third parties passing by in cars."

Despite the horrific attack last week, most physical confrontations with clamping staff are not serious. "The most common physical abuse would be pushing and that would be about twice a year," he said. "We take that very seriously and in such cases our guys on the beat have an emergency channel and that automatically dispatches a supervisor to the scene and triggers a call to the gardaí."

Vehicles are also fitted with GPS systems so that the location of anyone in trouble can be pinned down instantly. "People might get very irate and that is when the confrontation management comes in." Cases involving physical assaults are prosecuted as a matter of policy but the DSPS has only had a few cases brought before the courts in the last couple of years, he said.