OPERATING profits for Directroute, the company behind the €800m Limerick Tunnel fell to €8.5m last year despite the help of traffic guarantee payments totalling €4.1m made by the state agency, Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII). The firm saw a drop of 9 per cent in its last accounts filing after the State guarantee payments reduced from €4.4m to €4.1m.
To date since its opening, Directroute was paid €34 million under the terms of a public-private partnership (PPP) contract to compensate for the smaller numbers using it. However, toll receipts for 2017 increased from €13.86m to €14.9m, or €40,821 a day.
The traffic guarantee payments are made when daily traffic volumes don’t exceed 23,000 and they were put in place at the outset of the project in order to attract consortia to bid to build the scheme.
Pre-tax losses for 2017 increased by 19 per cent to €7.6m but the firm said that the largest expense remains interest repayment on the project.
