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

Letter to Samantha Breen (17th August 2006)

We refer to your letter dated 25th.July 2006, and respond as follows. We are surprised that NCTs does not know or are not aware of the legal status of the certificate which you issue to motorists.

Since NCTs does not guarantee the roadworthiness of a vehicle for the duration of the period of the certificate and that the responsibility lies on the motorist to maintain their vehicles in a roadworthy condition, what is the purpose of your ‘test’ as you now indicate that it is the owners responsibility to maintain the vehicle after the test and for the next two years. During this period, who decides whether the vehicle is roadworthy or not? From your response, it is the owner, and if the owner was responsible and continues to be responsible for the ‘roadworthiness’ of the vehicle before and after the test, the question arises again, what is the purpose of this test?

Briefly, the insurance company covers the motorist for the full duration of the insurance certificate and the motor tax covers the use of the road for the full duration of the motor tax disc, yet you are inferring that your two year certificate is only valid on the day of the test, if it is even valid on that day! How therefore can NCTs purport to issue a ‘roadworthiness’ certificate for two years if no legal responsibility attaches to the issuing of your certificate for that duration?

Thank you for your NCT manual. We observe that 57 items are required to be checked. How then can NCTs have approximately 385 failure points on 57 items? This is totally disproportionate to the time duration of the test as well as being indicative of a ‘failure mentality’ where the odds of a failure are in the NCTs favour. If 57 items are to be tested, then there should only be 57 items of failure. We also observe that you have 58 items of failure approximately on bulbs alone. We have 2 of everything in relation to bulbs. That is why there is two of everything. Are you seriously suggesting that a vehicle is ‘unroadworthy’ for the sake of a bulb? Is my house ‘unliveable’ or ‘unhouseworthy’ if my living-room bulb becomes extinguished?

The recent 19 changes to NCTs have nothing to do with roadworthiness or safety and we observe that the recommended changes of improvement suggested by this association were never implemented nor even contemplated and this will be communicated to the Department of Transport.

We do not wish to see how the test is performed in Dublin on one of your ‘typical lanes’. We are campaigning strongly for the removal of NCTs and for reputable local garages to perform this test in accordance with the provisions of Directive 96/96, Article 2. The reason for this is that thousands of our members have legitimate complaints which have been consistently ignored by NCTs and the Minister and the Department of Transport and the arrogance of your staff which no citizen in this country is going to tolerate.

We now enclose evidence of many organisations and media which have investigated your behaviour and performance and which consistently shows that this company is engaging in practices which are clearly ‘ripping-off’ the Irish citizen to ‘maximise your profits’ and the Government have given NCTs a monopoly ‘licence’ to ‘rip us off’. For this and other reasons, many of our members do not wish to participate or have this test conducted by NCTs where they are servicing and maintaining their vehicle by getting them regularly serviced at the manufacturer’s recommended intervals so as to avoid being subjected to the levels of ‘abuse’ inflicted on our members. The degrading attitude of staff of NCTs towards the motorist has caused a deterioration of respect for NCTs and contrary to the Minister implying that 90% of motorists are satisfied with NCTs, we find that the opposite is the case.

Thank you for attention.

cc. Minister Martin Cullen at the Department of Transport.
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David Russell
National Secretary
087 231 2250.

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John Lernihan
National Chairman
087 250 9123