A service station on Dublin’s south quays has been fined €14,000 in the District Court today after pleading guilty to using fuel pumps which were “under-measuring” the amount of petrol and diesel being sold to consumers.
In an action taken by the National Standards Authority of Ireland’s (NSAI) Legal Metrology Service (LMS), the service station, trading as One Oil pleaded guilty to twelve charges of breaches of the Metrology Act, 1996.
The petrol station, located on Ushers Quay in Dublin, pleaded guilty to offences connected to the use of an unverified instrument and short measure on sale of motor fuel under Sections 13 and 28 of the Act, respectively.
The action was taken after the NSAI received a number of complaints from consumers about the petrol station.
In August 2010, LMS inspectors visited the station to inspect the premises and verify instrument compliance. A significant number of non-compliance issues were uncovered and reported to the garage owners, who were instructed to immediately rectify the non-compliances.
However, in response to further complaints from members of the public in February 2011, LMS inspectors revisited the premises and discovered that the previously verified and rectified fuel pumps had broken seals and were significantly under-measuring petrol and diesel being sold to consumers.
According to Maurice Buckley, the chief executive of the NSAI, its Legal Metrology Service visited almost 4,000 trader’s premises and tested more than 17,000 measuring instruments - such as supermarket weighing scales and taxi meters - where the correct charge or cost to consumers is dependent on accurate quantity measurement.
In addition, almost 8,000 fuel pumps at 1,300 service stations were also inspected last year. More than 2,000 warnings, which require corrective action such as minor adjustments or recalibration of equipment, were issued to traders.
There were also 13 prosecutions taken for non-compliance, where a trader did not take appropriate corrective action following a warning, with 10 of these resulting in conviction. Each of those prosecutions was related to non-compliant taxi meters.
