Irish Drivers Association – Giving Irish Drivers A Voice        Irish Drivers Association – Giving Irish Drivers A Voice

Letter to Members of the Joint Oireachtas Committee (23rd April 2006)

Members of the Joint Oireachtas Committee

Ladies and Gentlemen, TD’s Senators and Members of the JOC, we wish to thank you for giving us this opportunity to present concerns from our members on various aspects of Transport. We are grateful and we thank you in advance for hearing us.

We have had hundreds of complaints from people in connection with NCT staff attitude and behaviour, manifesting itself in rudeness, impoliteness, dismissiveness and inattention to citizens concerns. It has been pointed out to us in numerous circumstances concerning failure of their vehicles which has nothing to do with its safety or its roadworthiness. These would not have occurred had this NCT Company not been given a ‘monopoly’ control of this situation. The citizen has been deprived of the benefits of Article II of Directive 96/96 by being denied the choice of having their vehicles tested in conjunction with the service of their vehicles at their local garage. This denial has contributed to the ‘monopoly’ situation which NCT have been afforded and are currently enjoying. The effect of this is that the NCT think they can do what they like and the citizen has little or no redress against them. This dictatorial style attitude from NCT is not acceptable to the Irish Motorist or this Association and this monopoly situation is being used to continually fraud the citizen to the point that it is gone ‘beyond a joke’ and is in our opinion a criminal offence and potentially an infringement of Article 82 of the Treaty of Rome.

The continual high failure rate is attributable to such irrelevant and minor requirements as part of an approximately 400 item check criteria when Directive 96/96 requires only 2 items to be tested, namely brakes and emissions, relating to safety and the environment respectively. Notwithstanding that Article 5 allows Member States to ‘increase the number of items to be tested’, where did 398 other items come from and one would expect these items to be directly related to safety and the environment and not to issues unconnected with these matters.

The Directive refers to ‘tests’ being ‘inexpensive’. By contrast, the NCT have not made the test cost €49, but €49 + €27.50 retest when they are deliberately and with impunity failing citizens vehicles for one purpose and one purpose only, that is to ‘maximise profits’ whilst simultaneously engaging in a criminal activity of ‘frauding’ and making a fool of and at the expense of an already hard pressed, over burdened, over taxed Irish citizen in relation to motoring costs and maintenance costs.

At the Joint Oireachtas Committee, we, as an Association will be requesting the removal of NCT by not renewing their contract and giving the consumer a better choice by enabling major and local garages to be allowed to become designated vehicle testing centres as per Article II of Directive 96/96. We will be indicating that without these measures, the Directive is improperly implemented and if necessary will take this matter up with the European Parliament.

Yours Faithfully,
……………………
John Lernihan
Chairman.