Thousands of motorists who have been using the barrier-free toll on Dublin’s M50 motorway have had their details stored by the toll operator since August 2008, despite concerns it may have breached the Data Protection Act.
The complaint has now been partly resolved with a commitment by the National Roads Authority and the toll operator BetEireFlow Ltd to make certain changes to the system to allow "anonymous" travel.
It has emerged that the details and toll passages of users who opted not to register for either a tag or for video recognition of their vehicle were nonetheless stored on the toll operator's database under a single account number linked to their vehicle registration plate.
The operator proposed to keep the information on each transaction for a year. The NRA said it did not have a record of how many such users it had on its database, but about a quarter of the 95,000 daily toll trips are by unregistered users.
Following a complaint made by this reporter in May in relation to BetEireFlow's storage of personal data for an "unregistered" account, the Data Protection Commissioner pursued the matter with the NRA.
It is understood that if a resolution had not been reached in relation to the complaint, the commissioner would have had to consider using his statutory powers of enforcement.
The NRA has now agreed to amend the unregistered payment process to allow motorists find out the balance they owe, without compromising privacy. Once this is in place it intends to reduce the data retention period to six months and further if this becomes feasible.
Motorists will also, within the coming months, be able to opt for "anonymous" travel through the M50 toll, subject to waiving certain rights, such as the right to challenge a transaction once it has been deleted.
The NRA said it is also amenable to considering a new form of tag product, which would include automatic data deletion.
"It's about 2 per cent of people who would be that concerned about it, but there are plenty of people who don't want their movements recorded," said deputy data protection commissioner Gary Davis.
An NRA spokesman said: "Overall it was a very positive engagement because clarity needed to be brought to the matter. This is a first-of-its-type system, the barrier-free system, and operationally, how to execute the consumer's rights and make sure they are protected is what the NRA was concerned about."