M50 Toll Bridge – Godot waits for Quango

Like Samuel Beckett in “Waiting for Godot”, the public are likely to suffer nothing happening from the NRA is the Quango reprise of the Theatre of the Absurd. The absurdity of Irish administrative life never fails to cause wide-eyed wonder. Godot waiting for the quango is to signify that nothing is going to happen. Before you ask, even Sam Beckett refused to define who was Godot.

As well as the excessive charges, the giant overhead signs on the M50 list an 1890 50 10 50 phone number for phone payments and also let you know that there is a discount system while reminding you that the €3 toll must be paid by 8pm on the following day. The Tag system charges €2 per trip and the video system charges €2.50 per trip. I think that this is a ripoff as the toll was increased in 2008 when this system was introduced. Please read the National Roads Authority’s rationale for PPP (public/private partnerships) in relation to tolls on their website and taken together with the soaring costs of tolls, it is astonishing that the Minister for Transport is not forced to resign. This is a truly incompentent rip-off government as regards the roads. Tonight on 16/17 February, I tried to pay the toll at Finglas and at Tallaght in Topaz garages but both found that their registration machines had failed. This is not the first time that this has happened. So I will wait with interest the response by Mr Fred Barry of the NRA to the letter shown here from Dublin City Council.

I want to thank all Dublin City Councillors for supporting this motion in unison.

Letter to Cllr Bill Tormey from Dublin City Council's Roads and Traffic Department