Madam, – As a visitor to your country may I draw attention to the amazingly unfriendly toll system on the motorway around Dublin? I understand that someone wants me to pay for using this part-completed road. So why do they not have a sensible way of arranging for this – other than by requiring me to give away my credit card details over a phone line – which for security reasons I have no intention of doing?
Mistakenly, I thought it would be possible to pay the toll fee with cash at one of the staffed toll booths. How silly of me. The gentleman in the toll-booth looked down at me as if I were mad for thinking that anything so logical could happen. Instead I was advised to find some newsagents in a town I had not planned to go near.
Is this system typical of the quality of management in Ireland or an aberration? Maybe I am lucky that my number plates are not Irish? – Yours, etc,