The operators of the West Link toll bridge, National Toll Roads, will have generated around €1 billion in gross revenue by the time its franchise on the facility expires in 2020, a Dáil committee was told yesterday. Martin Wall reports.
The chief executive of the National Roads Authority (NRA), Mr Michael Tobin, said that by the end of this year motorists using the M50 motorway will have paid around €310 million in tolls on the bridge since it opened in 1990.
The NRA expects that tolls on the West Link will rise again in January.
Mr Tobin told the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport that the NRA forecast that around €700 million more would be generated in tolls between now and 2020, when the operation of the bridge reverts back to the State.
Mr Tobin said the NRA believed it would cost between €300 million and €400 million for the State to buy out the contract held by National Toll Roads for operating the facility.
The State has so far received around €65 million from the company as its share of the revenue generated by tolls on the bridge.
The Exchequer receives a share of the tolls once daily traffic volume exceeds 27,000.
Mr Tobin forecast that of the €700 million in tolls which National Toll Roads was likely to receive between now and 2020, the company would have to pay around €360 million to the State in various payments, taxes and rates.
He said the deal between National Toll Roads and the then Dublin county council (which was subsequently endorsed by the Department of the Environment) for the construction, maintenance and operation of the bridge had been concluded in 1987.
This was a time when the economic outlook for the country was uncertain.
He said that at that time, Exchequer funding for investment in the national road network was limited - €147 million in 1987 - and that traffic volumes and growth forecasts were substantially different from that which subsequently transpired.
"Real risk and uncertainties attached to the Toll Agreement when it was concluded and to National Toll Roads' commitment to finance the construction and maintenance of West Link and a section of the M50 motorway. These should be kept in mind in any evaluation of the agreement undertaken with the benefit of hindsight," Mr Tobin said.
He said there was a genuinely held conviction at the time that the agreement between the company and the council represented a good deal.
The chairman of the transport committee, Mr John Ellis, refused to allow a question from Ms Róisín Shortall of the Labour Party seeking details of the identity of the officials who had signed the agreement with National Toll Roads.
Mr Ellis said that the person concerned was not before the committee.
Ms Shortall described the toll bridge as a "cash cow", and calculated that National Toll Roads would ultimately make a return of more than 2,000 per cent on an initial investment of around €38 million.