Motorists left behind more than €300,000 at toll booths last year after driving away without change when passing through a motorway plaza.
Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) toll booths generated nearly half a billion euro in 2025 with the chronically congested M50 accounting for more than 40 per cent of the total.
TII also revealed that there was €445,000 worth of unpaid tolls nationwide last year although they refused to provide a breakdown of which roads were most problematic on security grounds.
The transport operator said a further €5.93 million of bad debt was written off on M50 tolls, according to records released under Freedom of Information.
READ MORE
The Dublin ring road – despite its reputation for almost daily gridlock – continues, however, to be a cash cow, generating €216.6 million in toll revenue last year.
Payments for use of the M1, which connects the capital to the Border, totalled €52.4 million in 2025. Motorists left around €102,000 in tolls behind when travelling on that motorway, TII data shows.
The M4 motorway, linking Dublin with the west, generated €49.45 million in toll revenue with just €9,000 in overpayments.
The next highest earning road was the Dublin Tunnel, where motorists forked out €35.4 million for a shortcut in and out of the city centre.
Around €27,000 in overpaid tolls were left behind by motorists. The Limerick Tunnel generated almost €31 million in income for its operators with overpayments of around €31,000.
Both the M3 and the M7/M8 brought in roughly €29 million in toll income with around €65,000 in change left behind in plaza buckets.
Toll revenue of €15.62 million was reported on the N6, €24.7 million on the M8, and €14.6 million on the N25.
Across the board, the use of electronic tolling systems or tags accounted for around two-thirds of all payments.
TII said that every plaza in the country had an option for people to receive exact change if they wished.
They said figures for the East-Link toll bridge in Dublin’s Docklands area were not available as it was the responsibility of Dublin City Council.
A TII spokesman added: “The Government identified a role for public-private partnerships (PPPs) as a means of delivering critical public infrastructure. It was a Government policy decision to assist with the delivery of the new motorways.
“The revenues collected on these toll roads are collected by the relevant PPP company and are generally used ... to repay loans borrowed to finance construction of the road and to fund ongoing operations and maintenance activities.”
