Test centres deem almost 5,000 vehicles unsafe

NATIONAL CAR Testing Service inspectors considered almost 5,000 vehicles to be in a dangerous condition last year.

In its annual report, the service said that 4,920 vehicles, some 0.5 per cent of all those tested, were not safe enough to be on the roads – meaning they could not be driven away from the test centre.

The report also shows the car testing service, which is operated by Applus Car Testing Service Ltd, had to pay a €720,000 underperformance adjustment.

This came when it was fined by the Road Safety Authority for failing to fulfil a duty to provide appointments to customers within 28 days.

The service was also forced to give free tests to 17,000 customers (which would have earned it €850,000) to compensate for the backlog.

The report states testing capacity was stretched for much of the year because a higher than expected number of tests due to be completed in late 2009 spilled into the early part of last year.

However, the service made a pretax profit of €971,997 for the year on turnover of €43.1 million despite the difficulties.

The report notes just over half (51.8 per cent) of all vehicles tested passed at the first attempt, a slight increase (0.3 per cent) on a year earlier. Some 85.8 per cent of retested vehicles passed, down from 86.4 per cent in 2009.

Motorists in Donegal (61.3 per cent), Charleville (61.2 per cent) and Cahirciveen (60.8 per cent) were most likely to pass at the first attempt, with cars in Clifden (40.2 per cent), Tullamore (41.3 per cent) and Dundalk (41.6 per cent) least likely.

The highest proportion of dangerous vehicles were found in Mullingar and Dundalk (both 0.9 per cent) and Monaghan (0.8 per cent). Just 0.1 per cent of vehicles tested in Cahirciveen and Derrybeg were deemed dangerous.

It is an offence to drive such vehicles on a public road, with penalties ranging from a fine of up to €2,000 and penalty points to three months’ imprisonment.

The number of complaints from people attending test centres increased by almost 200 to 710 last year.

Applus was hit with fraud allegations this year after TV footage emerged of testing staff allegedly accepting money in return for passing an unroadworthy vehicle.

The allegations were not made in the period covered by the report.