File photo. Source: Eamonn Farrell/Photocall Ireland

MOTORISTS USING EFLOW tags will soon no longer be able to travel through certain toll booths due to a dispute between the tag company and the toll booth operator.

From 31 August drivers using eFlow tags will not be able to automatically travel through three tolling booths around Ireland and will have to stop to pay the toll instead.

The three tolling roads affected are:

M1 (Gormanston – Monasterboice)

M7/M8 (Portlaoise – Castletown/Portlaoise – Cullahill)

N25 (Waterford City Bypass)

All three tolling roads are operated by the Celtic Road Groups company who are involved in a dispute with eFlow around the signing of a new operating contract.

Essentially, eFlow – which is State-owned and operated by Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) – operates a toll collection service in line with CRG (tolls for eFlow customers are collected by the company and then paid to CRG).

The contract governing the agreement expired earlier this year and both companies have been unable to reach a new deal.

It is estimated that about 80,000 eFlow customers will be directly affected by the dispute.

Disruption

CRG general manager Lorcan Wood said that the company “deeply regrets” the disruption to motorists.

“We deeply regret the likely disruption and inconvenience to all our CRG customers,” he said.

“We really want to resolve the issue but at the moment we cannot meet the TII demands.

We remain in contact with TII / eFlow and continue to encourage them not to withdraw their service from their customers.

There are currently 11 toll roads in operation in Ireland, two of which – M50 eFlow and the Dublin Port Tunnel – are operated by TII.

A spokesperson for TII said that it had managed to negotiate a new agreement with all other toll road operators except for CRG.

Motorists using electronic tag services that are not eFlow (for example, Easytrip and ParkMagic) will not be affected by the dispute and will still be able to use the CRG roads.

TII also said that it was now trying to contact all of its tag customers to inform them of the change to the service and that it would assist them in switching to other electronic tag operators if they wished.

Fianna Fáil transport spokesperson Robert Troy said that the removal of the eFlow tagging would lead to increased congestion and called on Transport Minister Shane Ross to intervene to resolve the dispute.

“A solution must be found to settle this dispute before significant disruption is caused to commuters,” he said.