Life in the fastlane: Irish buy €250k cars

TWENTY new cars registered in Ireland last year were worth more than €250,000.

Figures released yesterday by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) provide further proof of Ireland’s booming market for luxury cars.

A total of 1,134 new cars registered in 2006 had a value in excess of €100,000, with 20 vehicles worth more than €250,000.

Almost half of all new cars last year had a value in the range of €15,000 to €25,000.

The statistics reveal that close to 2.3 million vehicles were licensed in Ireland at the end of 2006 with private cars accounting for 77% of the total.

The figures also show the dramatic growth in car ownership with the number of vehicles on Irish roads recording a 72% increase over the past decade. However, less than half of 1% of the 173,000 new private cars licensed last year were using alternative, environmentally friendly fuels.

Toyota remained the most popular make for new cars registered last year with more than 24,700 vehicles sold or 16.1% of the total. The next most popular manufacturers were Volkswagen, Ford, Opel and Nissan, Renault and Peugeot.

The CSO figures also highlight how a record number of driving tests were conducted during 2006 with more than 158,700 tests held at 49 centres around the country by 131 testers — a 15% increase on the previous year.

The increase was facilitated by the outsourcing of driving tests to a private company in order to bring down average waiting times.

Despite the increased number of learner motorists sitting the test, the average waiting time fell to a little less than 30 weeks in 2006 compared with close to 33 weeks the previous year.

However, about 140,000 people remain on the waiting list to sit the test.

Under the Government’s new Road Safety Strategy which was launched in October, waiting times will be reduced to less than 10 weeks by next March.

The pass rate for males was 53.1% last year compared with 51.6% for females.

The pass rate varied from 41.5% in Kilkenny to 65.9% in Buncrana, Co Donegal.

One in four L-plate drivers who sat the driver theory test last year failed the exam as pass rates for the test fell to their lowest rate since the test was introduced in 2002.

In addition, close to 5% of all tested vehicles submitted for the National Car Test last year failed to meet the required safety standards — 35,000 out of 682,000.