THE GOVERNMENT will publish a public awareness leaflet later this year to address a lack of knowledge among car owners regarding their responsibilities to ensure old vehicles are disposed of properly.
The initiative forms part of a wider push by the Government to address the problem of unregulated scrap operators.
A 2005 ruling by the European Court of Justice found Ireland had “systematically failed” to respect the requirements of the framework waste directive. The directive requires waste facilities, including scrapyards, to hold a permit.
A spokeswoman for the European Commission said it is not satisfied the directive had been fully implemented, adding that if necessary actions were not taken, the commission could take Ireland back to court to request financial penalties.
The commission received a complaint which claimed local authorities were not taking effective enforcement action against unauthorised facilities handling end-of-life vehicles.
A Department of the Environment spokesman said the Office of Environmental Enforcement was now overseeing the actions of local authorities to “ensure that situations of general and persistent failures to act will not in the future be allowed to happen”.
He said the number of unpermitted sites has fallen from 329 in December 2008 to 132 in March.
Under a 2000 EU directive subsequently transposed into Irish law in 2006, owners of cars and commercial vehicles must dispose of their vehicles at an authorised treatment facility for the vehicle to be deregistered.
Although an estimated 127,612 end-of-life vehicles came off Irish roads in 2008, just 14,762 certificates of destruction – issued by authorised treatment facilities to show that a vehicle has been disposed of responsibly – were issued in this time period, representing just 12 per cent of vehicles.
The Department of Transport said the discrepancy between the number of end-of-life vehicles and the number of certificates of destruction issued can be attributed to a number of factors:
* the fact that treatment facilities continue to receive end-of-life vehicles but do not issue a certificate of destruction;
* lack of awareness among the public of the need to acquire a certificate of destruction when disposing of end-of-life vehicles; and
* unauthorised activity in the dismantling and metal recovery sectors.
The number of certificates of destruction issued in Ireland rose to 21,883 in 2009 and reached 44,469 in 2010.
However, this jump can be partially attributed to the car scrappage scheme which saw an estimated 17,500 vehicles go through authorised treatment facilities as a requirement of the scrappage deal.