An investigation has been launched into the number of written-off cars that have been sold on to new owners. Simon Carswellreports
Maurice Ryan, a fireman from Ballina in Co Mayo, bought a 2004-registered Audi A3 in Tallaght on June 2nd, 2006. Driving the second-hand Audi at home in Mayo a few days later, the car's steering locked and the fan belt started making loud noises. He also discovered that the car's foglights weren't working.
He brought the car to his local mechanic who said the Audi had been seriously damaged in an earlier crash. The mechanic wouldn't allow the vehicle to be driven again - it was unfit for the road, he said.
Ryan has tried to get his money back from L&L Autos, the Tallaght company that sold him the Audi, but he has so far been unsuccessful.
The Dublin Circuit Court yesterday awarded Ryan damages of €24,950, the amount he paid for the car, and €1,500 for his loss and inconvenience.
The Tallaght firm was put into liquidation last month, and the judge yesterday suggested that Ryan's claim be amended so he can pursue the company's directors, Shane and Stephen Lyons, for his money.
During yesterday's court hearing, Kevin Cronin, the Audi's previous owner, said the car had been stolen from his house the year before Ryan purchased it, and written-off following a Garda chase.
Ryan said he did not know he was buying a written-off car in June 2006. He said he needed a car for his work because he was on call 24-hours a day. He described the whole affair as "a nightmare".
Ryan is not alone. An investigation involving the Road Safety Authority (RSA), the Department of Transport, the Revenue Commissioners and the Garda has been launched into a claim that hundreds and possibly thousands of cars written-off in crashes and deemed to be unfit to drive again have been put back on the roads. In some cases these cars have new owners and have even passed the NCT.
The investigation was launched after Cartell.ie, a privately-owned website which allows prospective car buyers to check the history of a second-hand car before they purchase the vehicle, discovered major discrepancies between a record of write-offs held by a major insurer and the State's vehicle register.
The insurer provided Cartell with a list of 5,430 write-offs, cars that were damaged beyond repair and unfit to be driven again. Cartell, which has access to the National Vehicle File (NVF) held by the department, cross-checked this list with the State register.
It found that 1,351 vehicles had not been recorded on the State's list as having been written-off.
Some 125 vehicles had been re-taxed, and most had had a change of ownership. Incredibly, almost 100 vehicles on the insurer's list had passed NCT since being written-off.
There is concern that the number of write-offs being repaired, sold to new owners and returned to the road could be far higher, given that Cartell's research was based on just a small sample.
The problem arises in the reporting on write-offs. Car owners are obliged by law to notify the department if their vehicle is scrapped or destroyed, but they are not doing this and there are no fines in place to force them to notify the department, unlike in the North and Britain.
Insurance companies are only obliged to notify the department if a car is a write-off if they take ownership of the car after it has been stolen. Some companies notify the department of write-offs, but this is usually done on an ad hoc basis.
Michael Horan, manager of the Irish Insurance Federation's non-life division, said the motor insurance industry kept its own list of write-offs, but this was not a complete list because customers with third-party fire and theft did not have to notify their insurers if their cars had been written-off.
Policyholders could simply cancel their insurance without explaining why.
Horan said this was why the industry's list was not available to the public.
A spokesman for Allianz said there was no obligation on insurers to hand over their list of write-offs to either members of the public or the Department of Transport.
He said a change in the law would be needed to make the list public, and to make reporting of write-offs compulsory.
"These cars are being repaired and put back on the road. This is a terrible scandal," says Cyril McHugh, chief executive of the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI).
"The insurance federation has a file but it won't make it public. They should make it public."
McHugh said a new system needed to be introduced to regulate all write-offs.
"They should be scrapped and a certificate of destruction should be issued for every written-off vehicle. It is a very serious safety issue for consumers.
"It is a whole black economy area and that is where these vehicles are probably getting sold. It needs to be tidied up."
One official at a motor tax office who contacted The Irish Times last week said garages were able to repair and sell written-off cars to new owners if they held on to the vehicle registration certificate.
He said write-offs were slipping through the system because there wasn't a complete list.
He said the Government could fix the problem by introducing a new reporting system where written-off cars would be issued with "a death or end of life certificate", stopping them from being repaired.
Cartell has also called for a change in the law to make the reporting of write-offs compulsory.
A spokesman for Hibernian said it welcomed any system that improved the quality of vehicles, including "compulsory notification" of write-offs and "any subsequent reinstatement of that vehicle".
A spokeswoman for the Department of Transport said the RSA was investigating the matter, and she expected the agency to make recommendations to the department after its investigation was complete.
It is widely acknowledged in the motor industry that there has been a major problem with the monitoring of written-off vehicles for some time, and the Government needs to act fast to correct the problem.
Ryan had no idea his second-hand Audi was a write-off when he bought it. More than a year later, he is still trying to recover the money paid for a car that should never have been driven again.