NCT question;

junkyard

I've spoken to 3 different members of the Gardai and got the same response, is the NCT test a legal requirement? the answer I got was they don't check for it and they didn't prosecute for not having a test on the car. What do ye think? Maybe this has been asked before but I don't remember seeing it.

stratos

As far as I know the nct has a technical legal problem, and as such the guards aren't interested in it. I have been stopped a few times and had no problem I had no nct.
People will scare monger you saying you car isn't insured with no nct,
My car was crashed and there was no problem, I was never asked about an nct.
I do believe however they are working on fixing this problem at the moment.

thelurcher

I was stopped by a guard and had everything in order - he started giving out that I didn't have the NCT disc displayed - I was driving a van :rolleyes:
It was on the Bandon - Clon road a good while after the whole NCT thing was introduced.

Abelloid

My Girlfriend was stopped twice with the NCT out by 6 and 8 months, not a word said about it, just tax and insurance checked.
First time was in the city and then Carrigloe

BrianD3

I have heard rumours about this and know of plenty of people who don't bother getting their cars NCT'd and have sailed through garda checkpoints The NCT regs are online on irishstatutebook.ie in case anyone feel like trying to find a loophole in the legislation

OTOH it coudl just be laziness on the part of the gardai. Or it could be political eg the authorities might not want to "go after" Fianna Fail voting farmers who won't spend money to get their 1985 Jetta through the test.

leeroybrown

I've been stopped once without one (the car has since been tested) and the response was "everything is perfect, on your way". At the moment the Gardai don't appear to enforce it but I'm sure that at some stage they will have to do so to some level. I wouldn't put it down to Garda laziness - if the Gardai are tasked with enforcing it properly you'll find them checking it at checkpoints from time to time.

I think that car testing is a very good idea but I think that the implementation could be better. The simple fact that the requirement to have one to tax your car was removed due to the reduced tax revenue speaks volumes about the governments lack of willingness to run it correctly.

Bam Bam

basically you can drive with an out of date NCT,however you need an in date NCT to be taxed.

My car is NCT'd til Feb 2006 but I'm taxed til OCT 2006 so I'll consider getting a new NCT around Aug 2006

BrianD3

Bam Bam wrote:

basically you can drive with an out of date NCT,however you need an in date NCT to be taxed.

My car is NCT'd til Feb 2006 but I'm taxed til OCT 2006 so I'll consider getting a new NCT around Aug 2006

You don't need an NCT to tax your car. When the NCT was first introduced you did but this fell by the wayside years ago

Bam Bam

On the tax renewal form you must supply a valid NCT cert.

BrianD3

Bam Bam wrote:

On the tax renewal form you must supply a valid NCT cert.

The form says nothing about the NCT. It does mention CRWs (certificate of roadworthiness) but if you read the back of the from you'll find that only applies to goods vehicles.

unkel

Bam Bam wrote:

My car is NCT'd til Feb 2006 but I'm taxed til OCT 2006 so I'll consider getting a new NCT around Aug 2006

If you NCT it around Aug 2006, it will still only be valid til Feb 2008

leeroybrown

Bam Bam wrote:

basically you can drive with an out of date NCT,however you need an in date NCT to be taxed.

My car is NCT'd til Feb 2006 but I'm taxed til OCT 2006 so I'll consider getting a new NCT around Aug 2006

As was already pointed out the requirement was dropped when the government noticed a reduction in motor tax revenue corresponding to lack of NCT tests. It was cheaper/easier to drop the requirement and get the momey back naturally.

The best time to do the NCT is whenever your car is in good condition and on good tyres. It still expires at the same date regardless of when you pass it so the best thing would be to test your car shortly after a service.

Savman

nct not enforced by anyone...yet

junkyard

Personally I couldn't be bothered getting any of my cars NCT tested. I always keep my cars in good condition so as far as I'm concerned I'm not going to be told by some failed mechanic who couldn't make it in the real world that my car would fail due to some stupid excuse like a faded county on the number plate or my indicator bulbs not being orange enough or my wheelwell is missing a grommet and I'll die of carbon monoxide poisoning. I read in the paper the other day about some of the NCT staff being fired and they were saying that they had to fail 50% of the cars that were being tested, its just another rip-off and the sooner people stand up for themselves the better in my opinion.I think people should demand that the roads are put right first and then worry about NCT testing. As we can see by the Government backtracking as regards NCT testing and road tax the bottom line is money. Toll roads are another pet hate of mine as we have already paid for good roads 10 times over and now we have to pay yet again, it really is unacceptable to accept this kind of crap, its bad enough to pay ridicules road tax charges, then VRT which is a total scam, then VAT, then high petrol charges including tax and vat, then insurance in some cases 3 or 4 times higher then any other EU country including VAT and last but not least speeding fines everywhere if you offend the powers that be. Our Government is surely onto a nice little earner with the Irish motorist. Are we ever going to get a break? I think not.:mad:

Captain Trips

Bam Bam wrote:

On the tax renewal form you must supply a valid NCT cert.

No, not unless your renewal period (the month after the expiry date) has passed. They stopped the requirement a long while ago as the NCT backlog was creating Tax backlog, etc., .

You get the online request in the post, you pop in your credit card number and 4 days later comes your tax cert - no NCT (I just did this and my NCT is very invalid) (as in, if I did it now it would expire in 1 month).

Bam Bam

So whats the point of the NCT then?

junkyard

The basic point of the NCT is to keep cars roadworthy, I will admit there was a lot of ****e on the roads to be fair but it went from one extreme to another. But I think its extremely unfair of the Irish Government to point fingers at the motorist and blame them for all the road deaths when in lots of cases the road surface is to blame. Not far from me there is a stretch of road, a main road I might add, and so far there have been an average of five crashes a week on this road which is subsiding, has serious potholes and , at this time of wear, is coated with a green slime. This road has every type of defect known to man, I'm sure Land Rover would be interested in buying the rites to it. But seriously its only a matter of time before someone is killed on it again, but 20 years on nothing has been done to correct it.

JohnCleary

Bam Bam wrote:

So whats the point of the NCT then?

Depends on who's eyes is looking at it. In a way, the NCT is a good idea, it has stopped a lot of sh1tters with no seatbelts being driven on the road, etc.

On the other-hand, its a money making scam. Failing people because their reg plate doesnt give the county in Irish, etc. I failed because one of my reg light bulbs had failed. Infact it was just a corroded connection, I asked the NCT man (non national) to just stand there for literly 1 minute while I got my screw driver out to re-make the connection, but he was having none of it and told me to make an appointment and come back another time (Cost-free as it was only a visual inspection)

I think the NCT does not justify the road-worthyness of a car. "Why", I hear you ask... "They put the car through a very rigorous test". True, they do. But an NCT is valid for 2 years. You could come out with a fresh NCT, and crash a week later. You could get a handy-fix for cheap. Your chassis may be bent, your SRS system may not be working, your seatbelt pre-tensioners could be borked, making your car unsafe, but it still has an NCT. You get the idea :rolleyes:

Savman

junkyard wrote:

Personally I couldn't be bothered getting any of my cars NCT tested. I always keep my cars in good condition so as far as I'm concerned I'm not going to be told by some failed mechanic who couldn't make it in the real world that my car would fail due to some stupid excuse like a faded county on the number plate or my indicator bulbs not being orange enough or my wheelwell is missing a grommet and I'll die of carbon monoxide poisoning. I read in the paper the other day about some of the NCT staff being fired and they were saying that they had to fail 50% of the cars that were being tested, its just another rip-off and the sooner people stand up for themselves the better in my opinion.I think people should demand that the roads are put right first and then worry about NCT testing. As we can see by the Government backtracking as regards NCT testing and road tax the bottom line is money. Toll roads are another pet hate of mine as we have already paid for good roads 10 times over and now we have to pay yet again, it really is unacceptable to accept this kind of crap, its bad enough to pay ridicules road tax charges, then VRT which is a total scam, then VAT, then high petrol charges including tax and vat, then insurance in some cases 3 or 4 times higher then any other EU country including VAT and last but not least speeding fines everywhere if you offend the powers that be. Our Government is surely onto a nice little earner with the Irish motorist. Are we ever going to get a break? I think not.:mad:

Angry little one aren't ya?

I suppose you think the Celtic Tiger economic boom was a waste of time? It's not like wages are higher now than they ever were before? I'm quite sure personal tax credits have been increased in recent years. Still can't please everyone eh?

If I was you I wouldn't refer to NCT Mechanics as "failed" persons who couldn't "make it in the real world" - that would just show up your ignorance and/or stupidity. Those mechanics are in full-time employment and are people I would very much consider to be in "the real world" so your comment there confuses me enormously

junkyard

My reply to your thread Savman is its very easy to find fault or examine a car, being able to fix it is another matter altogether. Any Muppet can tick a series of boxes and fail a car over some stupid thing that isn't always safety related. My argument is about us having to put up with more ****e than we really have to and the more that gets thrown at us and we put up with the more we'll have to put up with.

Boggle

NCT: there was a problem with the law so the gardai were told to stop enforcing it. Dunno if it has been rectified but I seriously doubt it... Have said this in umpteen threads and asked for any members of the gardai who frequent boards to confirm or deny but they never did.

Toll roads are another pet hate of mine as we have already paid for good roads 10 times over and now we have to pay yet again, it really is unacceptable to accept this kind of crap

Put it this way, anyone who has to go to work via the M50 toll bridge is paying 1.80 each way - E3.60 a day. Considering you do this approx 250 days a year then your paying E900 a year to drive that single stretch of road. Anyone who doesn't have a problem with this must really think its fun gettin it up the a$$!!

Litcagral

junkyard wrote:

, then insurance in some cases 3 or 4 times higher then any other EU country :

This is because personal injuries compensation awards in Ireland are on average much larger than in other EU countries.


Re: Registration plate Regulations - this is an EU directive. The NCT test is just used as a convenient way of checking it.

Savman

Junkyard you took a swipe at nct staff and although I don't know them personally in my 2 times dealing with them they seemed to be doing their job properly, its not the mechanics fault the NCT was introduced they probably just replied to an ad in the paper so I don't think they deserve to be tarred with some kind of generalisation.

The whole point of the NCT as we all know was to get the old bangers off the road, you know the ones, they block your path on the motorway while spitting out all kinds of black fumes thru their exhaust and veering all over the place.

The NCT is, in theory, a good idea. The idea of some kind of national standard in place for road vehicles is only bringing the motor trade into line with many other professional industries where vetting and testing is in place. I think this especially applies to cars as the driver of a vehicle can be responsible for the lives of others as well as their own so I would agree that someone needs to keep a check on what kind of vehicles are being used and that they are in a safe, roadworthy condition. That's simply for the greater good rather than the individual loss (NCT is only €48 every 2 years, hardly a great amount of cash).

The problem with the NCT is that they strayed from the original idea (good) to the current testing routine (bad). Now they can fail you for stoopid things and people are up in arms (rightly so, I mean faded reg plate wtf )

That's why the gardai don't call in for backup if you have an out of date NCT cert on your window, they probably know you could have been failed on something very trivial and which would not have contributed to road safety overall. Perhaps your anger towards the NCT would be better said in a letter of complaint to their customer service manager or your local Council rather than on the internet, that way they might eventually respond to public demand and take your criticisms on board.

But the idea remains the same, if your vehicle is in good condition, you don't have very much to worry about :rolleyes:

akw_old

it is not illegal to not have your nct up to date. getting your nct is completely up to the owner of the car. guards cant say anything to you about it and they know it.

the good thing about though is if you are buying a recently nct passed car you know its in good condition.

if you crash without an nct, the other party can claim your car was not roadworthy.

its has gone to a money making scheme completely though and i personally think more needs to be done about it than a chat on a forum. a 4year old car is asked for its nct, not much going to be unroadworthy on a 4 year old car now, but nonetheless plently of people pay the €50 for a waste of an afternoon.

my mams renault clio, 99, failed a while back because they couldn't find the middle seatbelt in the back. the whole time they were looking for it under the seat, as if it was one that just belts accross the stomach, but the one in the clio for the middle seat comes from the roof of the boot. nct mechanic was good there!

Alun

akw wrote:

it is not illegal to not have your nct up to date. getting your nct is completely up to the owner of the car. guards cant say anything to you about it and they know it.

Actually I think you'll find it is. That the Guards either choose not to do anything about it or cannot (?) is another matter entirely.

Litcagral

akw wrote:

it is not illegal to not have your nct up to date. getting your nct is completely up to the owner of the car. guards cant say anything to you about it and they know it.

if you crash without an nct, the other party can claim your car was not roadworthy.

its has gone to a money making scheme completely though and i personally think more needs to be done about it than a chat on a forum. a 4year old car is asked for its nct, not much going to be unroadworthy on a 4 year old car
QUOTE]



It is illegal to drive a vehicle which has been due for a test but which has not passed or failed to be tested (unless exempt - ie used on an offshore island). It attracts a penalty of up to €1500. Just because a Garda may not bring it to the attention of the driver does not make it legal. None wearing of seat belts and drink driving were illegal years before the Gardai began checking them. In the event of a motor insurance claim, the failure to hold a valid NCT certificate MAY be a factor used against the appellant.

I don't see how it could be a "money making" scheme. Each car has to undergo the same tests whether it's 4 years old or 24 years old. Just because a car has nothing wrong with it , that does not make it any cheaper for the NCT to test. I remember reading somewhere that initially it was being run at a loss to the Government.