The National Roads Authority confirmed it is in talks with the Government in a bid to buy up the Westlink Toll Bridge, it emerged tonight.
National Toll Roads (NTR) currently has the contract to operate the M50 toll plaza, through which over 80,000 vehicles pass each day.
Toll prices increased to €1.80 in January and motorists blame the Westlink for daily peak-time gridlock on the motorway.
National Roads Authority chief Fred Barry hinted at the Oireachtas Transport Committee today that it was in talks with the Government to buy NTR out of the contract - which was negotiated in the mid-1980s.
He said: "We are in discussions with the Department of Transport and others as to just what we want to do in that arena. "It's all fairly commercially sensitive at the moment.
"We will do whatever we decide when we've discussed it with the Government." When asked by Green Party TD Eamon Ryan if a buyout was possible, Mr Barry replied: "Yes." Senator Shane Ross, who has formed a protest group to abolish the toll charges, said: "This is extremely welcome news."
The Committee's Fianna Fail chairman John Ellis said: "Where there's a will, there's a way and if there is a will with NTR to do something, I'm sure something can be done."
Mr Barry said that the NRA was having dialogue with NTR on phased tolling improvements over the next few years. However he added: "But I wouldn't like to mislead anybody here to think that we are in a renegotiation phase with NTR on the contract, because we're not."
Mr Barry said the NRA was still dependent on shared funding from the Westlink Toll Bridge to finance an upgrade of the M50 motorway beginning this summer. "In our financial planning that funding is part of what we need going forward."
PA