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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
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