Motorist fined €25,000 and cars seized over unpaid M50 tolls

Dozens of cars have been seized and one motorist has been fined €25,000 this year as the State has adopted a “hardened” approach to chasing down motorists who fail to pay tolls on the M50 ring road.

The compliance rate for the toll section of the M50 is very high at 96.7 per cent, but this still leaves 1.5 million unpaid tolls in a year.

When motorists do not pay, they are pursued by Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII)’s enforcement service provider, Pierse Fitzgibbon Solicitors, which issues legal demand notices. The firm’s managing partner, Riobard Pierse, said the State’s enforcement level “has gotten more serious” in 2015 with the initiation of criminal proceedings against persistent offenders for the first time.

He described “persistent offenders” as individuals who “racked up 100-plus unpaid tolls” and said there were about 2,500 vehicles considered “the real hardcore offenders”.

He said the State’s rate of seizing vehicles had “escalated significantly” in 2015. “There were very few seized before this year and at the moment there are maybe one or two cars per week being seized.”

Imprisonment

Criminal summonses can carry a penalty of up to €5,000 per unpaid passage and/or six months imprisonment. Statistics provided by TII show the highest fine for a criminal court case in the past year was €25,000.

The fine was the result of five separate convictions on which the judge imposed the maximum €5,000 fine in each case. Mr Pierse said this was because the individual in question was a “persistent offender” and had not turned up to court.

The statistics also show that, so far this year, 486 judgments had been sent to relevant sheriffs for collection and about 42 vehicles had been seized.

“The TII is actually very tolerant when people genuinely slip up,” said Mr Pierse. “They will deal with the situation very reasonably, but when someone is a persistent offender, the approach has hardened.”

The TII said that as of the end of October, 66 out of 274 criminal cases had resulted in convictions. The remainder have either not been served with the summons, are awaiting a court date or have resolved their case. Pierse Fitzgibbon issues about 6,000 claims notices a year and about 300-400 criminal summonses on behalf of TII.