Motorists have been urged not to pay bills for barrier-free tolling on the Dublin’s M50 if they have been billed incorrectly.
AA Ireland said motorists the “length and breadth of the country” are receiving payment demands for journeys they did not make on the road.
The electronic tolling system is failing to operate correctly for thousands of vehicles, although the failure rate has dropped since the system came into operation in August.
The failure rate results from the system failing to read tags or misreading them, failures in reading number plates and human error in matching photos of number plates with registered tag holders. Failures were also caused by "back office" systems. These included tags not being read by the new sensors on an overhead gantry about 500 metres north of the former toll plaza.
The National Roads Authority (NRA) said today the number of problems it is encountering with barrier-free tolling on Dublin's M50 has been exaggerated. Publishing a review of the first month of operation of the new system, the NRA said its scanning system was accurate in 99.8 percent of cases - leaving errors in just 200 cases per day.
While it acknowledged that a further 1,000 tags a day were not being picked up by the scanners in the first weeks of barrier free tolling, a spokesman said this was largely attributable to error on the part of motorists.
The combined figure of 1,200 vehicles a day, which amounts to 8,400 vehicles per week is significantly less than the ongoing figure of 10,000 vehicles a day, put forward by transport sources yesterday.
At the launch of a review of the system's first month of operation today, the authority acknowledged additional problems which it refused to quantify in relation to a significant number of "back office" functions.
These included:
an unquantified number of failures in recognising payments made by Laser;
an unquantifed number of failures in relation to regognising payment by electronic methods in shops;
sending an unquantified number of demands for €40 fines before the deadline for the fine to rise to that level;
delays in the interoperability of tags between the M50 and other tolls, particularly the M1 and M4 which caused an unquantified number of tags to fail at the latter locations; and
200 to 300 calls a day being abandoned by the helpline call centre, in the first weeks of the system "to prevent callers having to hang on too long".
"This is infuriating," said AA Ireland's public affairs manager Conor Faughnan. "The thing is taking on a life of its own.
“Reams of paper are being sent out, causing waves of phone calls to come in. Frankly, it’s a mess. We were told to expect teething problems but this is unacceptable and will have to be resolved soon.”
“Motorists do not deserve this. The mess is not of their making, and they should not be expected to be the ones to resolve it. It is not reasonable to expect people to queue for ages to get through to a call centre. We are all busy enough. The NRA needs to put its house in order.”
The AA advised motorists not to pay and not be alarmed at the threat of a €5,000 fine or 6 months imprisonment. The group also said motorists should keep records, to inform eFlow about the problem by email or by post.