They can't all be crooks - can they?

Presumably you all saw the RTÉ Prime Time programme alleging "cartelism" among certain Irish motor dealers. Many of you will have been shocked that such practices could exist in such a noble trade. Many of you will not.

I, long resigned to being systematically ripped off every time I leave the house, am among the latter. Sadly, anyone who potters through modern life still expecting to get a fair deal is sorely misguided.

Still, my initial reaction was one of trepidation, of hoping the programme makers were as sure as sure can be they had their facts straight.

The Competition Authority chap described cartelism as a "hardcore criminal offence". If RTÉ were accusing Citroën, Ford, Mitsubishi, Volvo and Hyundai dealers of such a thing, they'd want to be damn certain they were right, would they not?

The thought occurred to me that it was entirely plausible some rival car dealers were using Prime Time to spread malicious disinformation. Or am I sounding too much like a mad loon conspiracy theorist?

And, I suspected, with any situation where whistles are being blown, there's a disgruntled employee lurking somewhere.

Lo and behold, as if by magic, he's wheeled out. "I'm a bit disgruntled," says Tony Whelan, before proceeding to spill the beans on Citroën dealers and their "cartel".

Let's, for the sake of argument, take it that the accusations are true. If only so I can have a giggle at the fact that Citroën and Volvo allegedly operated a system of penalties for dealers who broke internal price-fixing agreements.

Volvo, the epitome of middle-class, middle-aged law-abidingness and Citroën, creators of the DS and the home of French panache and elan.

Sorry, but the idea of Volvo dealers dispensing justice like a Scandinavian Mafia cracks me up. Do they leave reindeer heads on each other's pillows? Or blackmail each other by forcing miscreants to appear in porn movies?

And what do the Citroën enforcers do? Forcefeed their victims with foie gras until their livers explode? Caress them to death with the same gentle hands that moulded the curves of the DS?

My advice is this: ignore new car dealers altogether. Anyone who buys a brand new car is bonkers anyway. Go second-hand.

But then, that's a whole different world of pain, as Prime Time explained, largely because of the prevalence of clocking. But again, that's hardly news.

Winding back the odometer has got to be the most obvious trick in the book. Anyone who wasn't suspicious this happens on a wholesale basis is naive in extremis.

The best bit of the programme was when reporter Oonagh Smith confronted a car dealer on the Naas Road in Dublin and claimed he was flogging a "clocked" Merc. He looked the quintessential car dealer from Minder or some British soap - greasy hair, gold chain and open-necked shirt. This fine fellow, feigning deep hurt at being accused of such heinous crimes, pooh-poohed her claims.

"That's just in fairy land," said he, brushing her and her apparently incontrovertible evidence aside. Presumably he was referring to the self-same fairy land where his dreams of ever having another customer have gone.

But don't let all this put you off ever buying a car again. You aren't guaranteed to be ripped off. As Cyril McHugh of the Society of the Irish Motor Industry pointed out, there's 50,000 people working in the Irish motor trade. They can't all be crooks.

It's like journalists. We're not all shifty shysters or untrustworthy buffoons, you know. Although sometimes I'm not sure. Look at the above byline photo, for example. Would you buy a used car from that man?