The new Finance Bill promises stricter controls on used imports but why can you still insure a foreign registerd car and drive it here, asks Paddy Comyn
NEW MEASURES introduced in the Finance Bill are intended to create stricter controls on the importation of second-hand vehicles to the State. From 2010, there will be a pre-examination of vehicles prior to the payment of VRT on them and their registration.
There will also be measures put in place that will charge those importing a vehicle into Ireland from the UK interest on VRT that has not been paid within the prescribed period.
However, this might not solve the existing problem, whereby Irish motorists are importing cars fromBritain and failing to register them as many Irish insurance companies continue to insure Irish customers driving on UK licence plates.
Many insurance companies will readily insure an Irish driver at an Irish address on a UK-registered car, as this enables them to collect and transport the car from the UK or Northern Ireland, but in many instances the policies continue to cover these vehicles for extended periods of time.
In most cases insurance will be provided for 30 days until an Irish registration has been issued, but in many examples there remain Irish drivers in UK-registered cars legally covered by Irish insurance policies.
One broker told The Irish Times: "It used to be the case that insurance companies would cover the car but not issue an insurance disc until the new registration had been issued, but this is no longer always the case. Many brokers can now generate the insurance disc themselves, and this is issued to cars still on yellow plates."
According to Conor Faughnan of the AA, it is not up to the insurance companies to police the problem of yellow number plates. "Insurance companies care more about the risk and are not overly concerned about your compliance - the situation is not ideal, but in reality it is down to enforcement and that is not the job of the insurance companies."
This, it would appear, is something that doesn't occur so easily in other countries, such as Britain. According to Andrew Howard, head of Road Safety of the Automobile Association in the UK, British insurance companies simply won't insure a UK resident on a car with foreign plates.
This is a sentiment echoed by Steve Foulsham, technical services manager of the British Insurance Brokers' Association. "If you are a UK citizen, living at a British address, it is virtually impossible to insure a foreign registered car on a British policy, aside from temporary cover to transport the car to Britain. The DVLA system is very tight here, and works quite well in that regard."
A spokesman for the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) in Britain told The Irish Times that when a vehicle is imported for use in Great Britain, "it must be registered and taxed with the DVLA as soon as possible, as the vehicle can't be used or kept on public roads until it's registered and taxed".
There is also a number of alterations that needs to be done to the car in order to meet British National Type Approval for cars. These include the fitting of rear fog lights to the right of the vehicle, headlamps permanently adjusted to dip to the left (in the case of a left-hand-drive car), speedometers must be fitted that indicate both miles per hour and kilometres per hour. Garage receipts must then be provided as evidence that this work has been carried out.
These measures have, according to the AA, put off many foreign visitors to the UK from converting their cars. A crackdown by the DVLA in October revealed that 1,200 foreign drivers were caught driving without road tax in a one-week campaign. Drivers of foreign-registered vehicles must pay road tax if they have driven in the UK for more than six months.
While many of the new measures undertaken by the Finance Bill will keep tighter controls on cars entering the State from abroad, more may need to be done to combat the problem of non-payment of VRT which, according to the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI) is costing the State as much as €50 million to €100 million in lost revenues.