A company with links to the Isle of Man was paid 1.2m Euro a month to operate mobile speed camera vans in the Irish Republic.

Terms of the GoSafe contract to the run the privatised speed detection service were released to RTE News under the Freedom of Information Act.

They show the GoSafe, whose parent company Road Safety Operations is based in the island, was paid a flat rate of almost 45,000 Euro per month by the Irish gardaí (the police in the Republic of Ireland).

On top of this, a rate of 151.79 Euro was paid per hour of speed monitoring, while 144.40 Euro was paid for each surveying hour.

GoSafe provides 7,373 hours of speed monitoring each month. A minimum of 100 hours of surveying is also provided.

The contract ran for more than six years until May this year. It has since been replaced by a new agreement.

GoSafe employs 80 staff in Ireland and has 50 vans which monitor speed at 1,000 locations.

Since the system’s introduction, around one million speeding fines have been issued.