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Don’t
get caught not paying the toll on the M50 in Ireland
By Philip
Suter To
speed up the M50 “C” shaped motorway that links the north and south of Dublin
with all the major motorways and “N” roads, it has been widened in part and the
toll removed. The toll is for the bridge over the River Liffey and was originally
the west link with a toll plaza. There are now cameras operating as you cross
the toll rather like those for the London congestion charge zone. If
you are driving an UK registered car as I was last week, apparently because you
are on foreign plates does not exempt you from paying the toll. The signs are
not one hundred per cent clear and you are meant to pay this charge by 8.00 the
following evening.
If you don't pay your toll before 8pm on the day following your journey, a penalty
of €3 is added to the outstanding amount. If you fail to pay the toll and this
€3 penalty within the next 14 days, a further penalty of €41.50 will be levied.
Failure to pay the full amount due within a further 56 days will result in an
additional €104.50 penalty. Then if you still have not paid the total amount due,
legal proceedings will be initiated. Motorists
must carry an electronic tag, pre-register to pay automatically, or pay the following
day in order to avoid penalties. All car registrations from Ireland and the UK
passing through will be captured on camera. The
National Roads Authority will use a Europe-wide debt recovery agency to seek out
drivers from the UK who fail to buy an electronic tag or to pay later via the
internet. It compared the fines regime to the one used in London to monitor the
congestion charge. I
paid my €3 in one direction by having to find an Internet Café and paying on line
and in the other direction by finding a local SPAR shop that I could pay at. Apparently
you can save money by registering your car on line at the e-flow
website. If
you are renting
a car, do make sure that you check with the car rental company about the toll.
Some Irish
car rental companies are keeping credit card details so the amount can be
debited accordingly. If you are renting a car in Northern Ireland it is worth
checking there as well. On
the 11th June it was reported that the company handling customer queries from
M50 toll users has lost its contract due to the high volume of complaints about
its service. BetEireFlow which is the organisation that operates the M50 tolling
system on behalf of the National Roads Authority (NRA) had terminated its contract
with its customer service operator, Teleperformance. It had also handled queries
for the eFlow electronic toll tag service. According
to the report in "The
Irish Times" The contract has been awarded to Cork-based business services
provider Abtran, which is to hire an additional 100 staff for its head office
in Bishopstown to handle the approximately 6,000 telephone calls a day associated
with the service. One of the problems was that the legal firm appointed by the
NRA to pursue motorists who failed to pay the toll sent letters to motorists who
claimed their account arrears had already been paid. When
I paid my toll charge on line at the Internet café, I printed off the payment
receipt and when I paid the second time in the SPAR shop I asked for a receipt,
in case there was a payment at a future time. It
is important to retain these receipts for a while together with car hire information
as you never know when you might need it. A few years ago my wife received a speeding
notification from the Garda Síochána (Police). She had rented a car, however the
registration the car hire company had provided the authorities with was similar
to the one on the ticket. She
had to send them a copy of the car hire agreement to prove she was not driving
the car involved. Fortunately she had retained the information as otherwise it
would have involved contacting the car hire company and asking them to provide
this. Whether
you use the toll or not don’t forget to take out your
car hire excess insurance in advance and save money. ©Philip
Suter jml Property Services June 2009  
See
also: Irish
Tourism in 2011 -Improvements needed -Article January 2011 Irish
car hire companies are taking visitors for a ride -Article - November 2010 How
Irish car hire companies are not improving Irish Tourism Article - October 2010
Recession what recession in Dublin Ireland June 09 .jpg)
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