The future success of the National Car Testing Service depends on improvements in the management of the company to achieve "maximum efficiency of operations" and required performance standards, a report by consultants Pricewaterhouse Coopers has found.
The report, released by the Department of the Environment under the Freedom of Information Act, says that overall, the service provided a successful introduction to car-testing in Ireland with more than 300,000 vehicles tested last year.
The National Car Testing Service was one of a number of companies which tendered for the car-test contract and began testing in January 2000.
However, there was a number of "significant teething problems" with the test, including problems with reporting software and errors on some test reports. There was also insufficient staff employed in the call centre in the early stages of the test, leading to delays in answering customer calls.
The service's initial problems also included "entirely unreliable and inadequate" management reporting systems, poor productivity in test centres, industrial relations difficulties, inconsistencies in testing equipment and unanticipated financial pressures, leading to a review of the test fee.
The PricewaterhouseCoopers report also reveals that the service's management information systems proved "entirely unreliable and inadequate" at the outset and resulted in the need to recreate "from scratch" the suite of reporting software for use by it and the Department.
The service also suffered industrial relations difficulties, including a short strike.
The report also reveals the Department sent two notices to the service during the first year of testing, regarding what it considered to be "contravention of contractual agreements". A default notice was also issued in respect of its failure to inform the Department of impending industrial action. The car-testing service made a loss of £1.3 million compared to its tender projection of a small profit of £118,000 on a turnover of £11.7 million.
It was forced to revise its budget last August based on the lower-than-expected turnover in test centres. Fewer cars were tested in 2000 than had originally been anticipated. The number initially forecast in the original tender was 384,000. This was reduced by some 75,000 vehicles (19 per cent) to 309,434.
The service, however, performed well in terms of customer service satisfaction in a telephone survey carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Some 598 complaints about service were recorded by the car-testing service between April and December, most of them relating to test results or to the booking of the test.