Owners wishing to dispose of their old cars can now have them dismantled and recycled free of charge after a new law came into force on January 1st.
The new Waste Management (End-of-Life Vehicles) Regulations bring Ireland in line with an EU environmental ruling known as the End-of-Life Vehicle (ELV) directive, which ensures that carmakers are now fully responsible for the cost and administration of dismantling and recycling the 120,000-plus vehicles that come to the end of their lives each year in Ireland.
The new rule means the owners can now take their old cars to an authorised treatment centre for dismantling and have a certificate of destruction issued proving that the vehicle has been permanently taken off the road.
According to the new rules a minimum of 85 per cent of every ELV must now be recycled and, by 2015, that figure will rise to 95 per cent.
The legislation states that the dismantling and recycling must be achieved at no cost to the owner of the vehicle and must be done in a manner that does not cause environmental damage.
However, owners need to be aware that they cannot ransack the car for spare parts before handing it over. A vehicle presented for recycling must not have any major or valuable components such as airbags removed, nor can it have excessive rubbish dumped inside it.
The details of the new law are the result of months of negotiations between Ireland's car importers and the Department of the Environment. Despite these lengthy negotiations, there are still several points on which talks have stalled.
The Department continues to demand that there must be one authorised treatment centre in every local authority area and, in densely populated areas, that there must be at least one treatment centre for every 150,000 people.
However, the country's vehicle importers are calling for a relaxing of the rules arguing that in some sparsely populated areas, ELV collection points rather than treatment centres are adequate.
Car importers say that treatment centres in low population areas will be economically unviable due to the limited number of vehicles being recycled each year.
However, according to the Department of the Environment, there are already 40 treatment centres licensed in the country and it expects that number to rise to closer to 60 by the middle of this year.
The new law also requires that each of Ireland's car importers must register every year with each local authority.
All car importers have now done so for 2007, which resulted in a bill in excess of €3 million - a cost that will eventually be passed on to new car buyers.
Owners of ELVs who wish to avail of the new rules and have their car dismantled and recycled are advised to contact their local authority or the relevant car manufacturer for information on where their nearest treatment centre is located.