What’s been happening with the NCT?
The NCT – the National Car Test, if you didn’t already know, the check that is carried out on your car every year or two years to make sure it’s still roadworthy – has had a bad week as it emerged that a car passed as fit was actually too dangerous to drive.
How did this happen?
That’s a good question. The story came to light when Dubliner Esther Woodley contacted The Irish Times to tell us her story of buying a 2008 Volkswagen Polo from a car dealer in Dublin. Having bought the car on the basis of it passing the NCT test, said test was duly performed and the car collected as arranged.
And then, we assume, things started to go wrong?
Indeed so. Concerned that the Polo was displaying a lot of worrying warning lights, Ms Woodley contacted the dealership, which assured her it would sort any issues. But after that, communications with the dealer went blank, and when Ms Woodley tried to call in, she found a new name over the door, and new staff within.
How bad a state was the Polo in?
Truly shocking. An independent motoring engineer inspected the car and found that it had been seriously damaged in a frontal collision and that damage had been poorly, even shoddily, repaired. In fact, the car had previously been written off and twice failed the NCT on previous attempts. It only passed on the third try, just as Ms Woodley was buying it.
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So who’s at fault here?
Clearly, the car dealer in question – who’s not being named as there are possible civil and criminal investigations to be carried out – is at fault for passing off a car so damaged that it should have been scrapped as a legitimate purchase.
More seriously, there’s the question of how an NCT inspection station passed the car as safe to drive, when it very clearly and obviously was not. The Road Safety Authority (RSA), itself currently being broken up into different agencies following a Government review, told The Irish Times that it “acknowledges that this vehicle should not have passed its NCT upon its third presentation within a short period.”
The RSA told us that it has requested that Applus+ – the Spain-based company that runs the NCT service on a Government contract – investigates how this occurred and that any additional training and standards measures required are identified and implemented.
What happens next?
The RSA and Applus+ will have to investigate the incident and explain exactly how such a dangerous car passed its NCT. We will then have to find out whether or not this was an isolated incident.
