“People say to me – smart alecs – ‘Sure, why don’t you use the back roads?’ If I were to do that I’d be getting up in the middle of the night,” says Benny McCormick.
The construction worker from Virginia, Co Cavan, commutes five days a week to building sites inside the M50 orbital motorway around Dublin and pays six tolls on the average day.
“I’m sick of the tolls,” he says. “I hit two on the M3 going down to Dublin and then the M50 toll. It’s working out at the better part of €100 a week – on top of fuel and maintenance on the van. Then there’s tax and insurance. It’s a serious bill for an ordinary Joe Soap.”
The cost of using Irish roads has been rising incrementally.
RM Block
First, there was the budget for 2026 with its increase in carbon tax – an extra 2.5 cents per litre on petrol and diesel. The excise reductions that accompanied the “cost-of-living budgets” are rapidly receding in the rear-view mirror.
[ The toll operators that collected €476m from drivers on Ireland’s roads last yearOpens in new window ]
And in 2026 tolls on 10 routes around the country are set to rise. Private motorists will have to pay an extra 10 cents for every spin around the M50 and every time they pass through the booths on the M4 and M3.
If they wish to use the southbound Dublin Tunnel (informally known as the Port Tunnel) at peak times an extra €1 will apply.
McCormick says he is one of many people travelling from Virginia who struggle with the cost of the tolling.
“I hit the M50 shortly after six o’clock in the morning and you’ll usually avoid a jam at that time but you are guaranteed one in the evening – 99 per cent of my time on the M50 is spent just sitting there,” he says.
“If you are stopped, then the toll cameras should be cut out. A man going through six tolls a day should only be charged for two or three of them.”
He describes the attempts he has made to speed up his journey back to Cavan – and avoid some of the tolls.
“I was working on a site in Clondalkin and I thought maybe I’d chance going through Lucan and come out at Clonee. It was exactly the same as the M50 – I sat for 40 minutes. Sometimes I wonder if I’d be better off sitting at home.”
[ Have your say: How much are you paying in tolls on your commute?Opens in new window ]
Different roads have different rates – and different routes have multiple tolls. The cost can range dramatically.
The cheapest journey between two major cities is on the Dublin-Belfast route. If the M50 and Dublin Tunnel can be avoided, then the motorist will only be charged €2.30 on the M1 near Gormanston, Co Meath.
At the other end of the scale, a rush-hour trip through Dublin Tunnel heading towards Galway would incur the €12 peak charge in the tunnel, the M50 toll of at least €2.50 and then two tolls on the M4 and M6 – totalling €20.30 one way.
When the increases kick in for 2026, goods vehicles on all toll roads other than the Dublin Tunnel will pay an extra 10 cent per journey.
The biggest bugbear for hauliers is the M50 toll on the outskirts of Dublin where many large operators are based for logistical reasons. Lorry drivers are hit several times over, says David McArdle, managing director of DG McArdle.
“It’s a joke – and shouldn’t be happening at the moment,” he says.
“Our biggest route is the M50 and our travelling time since last year has increased between 20 and 30 minutes purely down to volume”.
He says other factors inside in the city, where some routes have been changed, is pushing ordinary commuters out on to roads “they don’t need to be on”.
He says that, while the planned increase of 10 cent per route for hauliers is small, it is one of several over recent years for “infrastructure that has already been paid for”.
Another complaint for McArdle is the continued presence of toll barriers on all routes other than the M50 – something he says that has been resolved across much of Europe.
“It’s a double hit. When we come to a stop with a truck it is costing us one litre of fuel – between slowing down, stopping, waiting on a barrier and then getting back up to running speed,” he says.
“Multiply that by all the trucks going through all the plazas and they are emitting a serious amount of carbon; that could be solved. How long has the M50 been barrier-free now? Why can’t it be done at other places?”
McArdle says these extra costs ultimately are passed along to customers and then the Irish consumer.
Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) operates the M50 and the Port Tunnel for the State and regulates the eight other privately run routes.
Spokesman Sean O’Neill says it is up to the private operators how they run their own tolling and the barrier system seems to work for them.
“We can’t tell them how to run their own shop,” he says. “We have installed a new system at the Port Tunnel – largely at the behest of the haulage industry – to make it faster and more efficient. But we still need barriers there in case of an incident in the tunnel.”
He also points out that the tunnel is free of charge for heavy goods vehicles (HGVs).
O’Neill says these roads, which have sped up travel times enormously, would not have been constructed at all had it not been for the private sector investment. The operators cannot increase tolls by more than the rate of inflation, he adds, and there are sizeable costs that come with maintenance of the roads.
Many of these privately run tolls will lapse back into State ownership in about 10 years’ time. There is the prospect of toll-free travel perhaps then.
However, as one industry observer notes, the increase in the number of electric vehicles on the roads could well lead to a significant drop-off in funds from excise duty – and future governments may seek to make up the shortfall at the toll booths.
For McCormick, the bad news is that the contract to operate the M3 toll near Clonee will be the last of the toll operations to return to State control – in the year 2052.
“Sure, I’ll be retired by then,” he says.
