{"id":145495,"date":"2025-11-18T00:54:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T00:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/145495\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T00:54:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T00:54:08","slug":"21-m50-motorists-fined-e440000-for-unpaid-tolls-as-most-fail-to-appear-in-court-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/145495\/","title":{"rendered":"21 M50 motorists fined \u20ac440,000 for unpaid tolls as most fail to appear in court \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Fines totalling \u20ac440,000 were issued to 21 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/m50\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/m50\/\">M50<\/a> toll evaders\u2014including one driver with more than a thousand unpaid trips \u2014 after they failed to appear in court.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A mixture of car, van and truck drivers did not turn up at Dublin District Court but were hit with penalties ranging from \u20ac15,000 to \u20ac25,000 in their absence on Monday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">One motorist \u2013 the only one who attended to plead guilty \u2013 was fined \u20ac200 and ordered to pay another \u20ac150 in prosecution costs after the judge noted that he still had just over 700 outstanding tolls racked up over four years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Airport baggage handler David Molloy (58), of The Wood, Millbrook, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/ireland\/dublin\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/ireland\/dublin\/\">Dublin<\/a> 24, had paid for 520 journeys and became frustrated by 1,150 written warnings arriving by post.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">However, the debts kept mounting with eFlow, which operates the barrier-free tolling system for Transport Infrastructure Ireland, and the court prosecution followed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Molloy was apologetic, telling the court he had since scrapped his car, and \u201cI\u2019m no longer driving, I use public transport now\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Judge Halpin said the tolls were necessary for road maintenance, but praised Molloy for turning up \u201cto face the music\u201d while most did not.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A woman who made no payments toward her 1,032 tolls and did not appear in court was fined \u20ac25,000.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The list featured three van drivers and a lorry owner. The no-show defendants were also ordered to pay \u20ac350 costs within three months.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">In an earlier list of similar prosecutions, Judge Halpin said  90 per cent of motorists do not engage with the court proceedings, and due to their intransigence, others had to pay for the maintenance of the roads. He explained that this was the reason for the severe fines frequently imposed on defendants who do not engage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Prosecuting counsel Thomas Rice (instructed by Pierse Fitzgibbon Solicitors) said each defendant faced five sample counts for journeys from December to May, and their cases could proceed in their absence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph b-it-article-body__interstitial-link\">[\u00a0<a aria-label=\"Open related story\" class=\"c-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/transport\/2025\/11\/16\/irelands-most-expensive-toll-road-journeys-costing-the-better-part-of-100-a-week\/\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ireland\u2019s most expensive toll road journeys costing \u2018the better part of \u20ac100 a week\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fines totalling \u20ac440,000 were issued to 21 M50 toll evaders\u2014including one driver with more than a thousand unpaid&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[615,61,60,69197,43],"class_list":["post-145495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-dublin","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-m50","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}