UK-registered cars written off as dangerous and classed as not roadworthy following crashes have been sold to motorists in Ireland and have reappeared on Irish roads, a new report has found.
The report, by Cartell.ie, a private company that allows prospective car purchasers to check the history of a secondhand vehicle before buying it, has found that some UK cars that were sold and later re-registered in Ireland were listed as being written off on the British vehicle register.
An investigation team comprising representatives of the Road Safety Authority (RSA), the Garda, the Department of Transport and the Revenue Commissioners are examining the report.
This is the second report into car write-offs carried out by
Cartell. A report compiled by the company
last summer found that Irish cars classed as total writeoffs
following crashes had not only reappeared on the roads after being
repaired, but had beenre-taxed by new owners and had passed the
National Car Test (NCT).
That report led the Garda, the Department of Transport, the Revenue Commissioners and the RSA to launch an investigation into its findings.
Cartell's second report has been passed to the investigating team and the inquiry has been widened to include it.
RSA chief executive Noel Brett said the investigating team received the second report last month and that the findings "had been added to the mix".
Cartell, which has access to the National Vehicle File (NVF) at the Department of Transport, for its website, took a sample of 4,479 vehicles previously registered in the UK between 2001 and 2005 which had been imported into the Republic.
It cross-checked these vehicles against the UK register held by
a company in Britain called HPI UK that operates a similar service.
It found that 320 vehicles had been classed as write-offs.
Twelve were listed as "Category B" write offs under the UK
classification system - cars that should
never be driven again.
Twenty vehicles, including five tractors, four vans, a BMW
7-series and a 4.6-litre Cadillac, had been listed as "scrapped" on
the records of the UK vehicle licensing authority, the Driver
Vehicle Licensing
Authority, according to HPI UK.
Some 125 vehicles were Category C write-offs - vehicles which had been extensively damaged but which the insurance company had decided not to repair. These types of write-offs, similar to the "beyond economic repair" write-offs in Ireland, can be repaired and returned to the road, but the insurer regards the cost of the repairs involved as prohibitive compared to the value of the vehicle.
Cartell believes the number of UK write-offs on Irish roads could be far higher, given that their sample covers just 4,479 UK imports. More than 300,000 cars were imported from the UK over the past 12 years. Some 53,000 cars were brought into Ireland last year alone.
The main function of the Irish Revenue is to assess the vehicle registration tax (VRT) on cars being imported into Ireland from the UK, as opposed to assessing the roadworthiness of the vehicles. Car owners can use pre-crash records to register UK vehicles in Ireland, allowing write-offs to be repaired and resold.
Jeff Aherne of Cartell said Irish drivers were "in the dark about the cars' true history". His company is calling for the Revenue to transfer any write-off data on imported cars to the NVF.
A Revenue spokesman said: "We are working very closely with the Department of Transport and the RSA to see what we can do to address the issue with current legislation.
"The working group is also looking at the possibility of proposing new legislation which we would, of course, implement if introduced," he said.