The Irish Tolling Industry Association (ITIA) is an ASECAP Full Member. Declan Cahill, President of ITIA and CEO of both DirectRoute Limerick and Fermoy PPP Motorway, has been appointed to represent the interests of the association within the ASECAP bodies.The association, formed by the following entities:
brings together a wealth of national and international experience to represent the collective Irish interest in ASECAP.
DirectRoute LtdRichmond Hill, Richmond HouseFermoy, Co-CorkIrelandT : +353 863887944W : www.directroute.ie
The Republic of Ireland extends to approximately 70,000 square kilometres which is a little under twice the size of the Netherlands or Switzerland. The country has the fastest growing population in Europe with a total of almost 4.5 million people of which 1.5 million reside in the Greater Dublin area. The total road network is around 93,000 kilometres of which about 5,500 kilometres are designated as national roads. Road infrastructure has historically been poor but has improved significantly in the decade to 2010.
Tolled roads or Turnpikes existed in Ireland as far back as the 1700 and 1800. In 1999 the National Roads Authority of Ireland (NRA), a State body whose primary function is 'to secure the provision of a safe and efficient network of national roads' undertook a national road programme of 800 kilometres to improve the arterial routes linking Dublin with the other main centre’s of Ireland. In order to accelerate the delivery of the much needed infrastructure the NRA secured € 2.1 billion of private sector funding through Public Private Partnership projects. These PPP projects rely on the collection of tolls. The schematic (see above the network) illustrates the extent of the current toll network which, on completion in 2010, will extend to over 300 kilometres.
Electronic Toll Collection (ETC) was introduced in Ireland in 2000. The system is based on DSRC technology operating at 5.8 GHz. In 2005 the National Roads Authority procured the development of an Information Exchange to facilitate nationwide ETC interoperability. Full ETC interoperability was achieved in 2007 when all the transponders in the market were admitted to the IEA. This included independent Service Providers (ISP) which were not aligned or linked to a particular toll concession. The function of the Information Exchange is to distribute transaction data from each plaza to the relevant transponder issuer for processing, to distribute consolidated transponder black and white lists to the plazas and to generate and distribute settlement statements at the end of each month.
There are currently eight transponder issuers in the market with approximately 500,000 transponders in circulation.The next significant milestone regarding Electronic Toll Collection was the introduction, by the NRA, of full Open Road Tolling on Dublin’s M50 C-ring which carries close to 100,000 vehicles a day. The system charges the road user via one of the fully interoperable ETC transponders or via number plate recognition technology.
Click here to download the 2021 map of Ireland's Toll Roads - JPG format
Data as for 31/12/2023 (Source: 2024 Statistical Bulletin)
