23,000 British car write-offs on Irish roads

UP TO 23,000 vehicles classified as “write-offs” in Britain have been imported into Ireland and issued with Irish registrations in recent years.

That’s according to independent car history checking company, Cartell.ie, who say that lives are being put at risk as a result of British write-offs being driven on our roads.

The company carried out a survey of 4,479 vehicles imported to Ireland from Britain between 2001 and 2005.

The study examined the number of vehicles registered for a particular year and the number of alerts imposed by British insurers against that figure.

In 2005, of the 900 vehicles studied, 51 were classed in Britain as a “write-off”.

The entire annual percentage of written-off vehicles is between 1%-2% in Britain. However, for vehicles imported into Ireland in 2001, this percentage was 9.9%, with the average over the five-year period being 7.14%.

This figure fell to 5.6% in 2005 as result of the vehicle identification check introduced in Britain, but is still more than twice the natural write-off rate for Britain.

According to Cartell.ie’s Jeff Aherne, 319,816 of the 3,350,675 vehicles registered in Ireland since January 1995 have come from Britain.

“If the average percentage of write-offs set out in our sample is applied to this figure, then we estimate that over the last 12 years, 22,834 written-off vehicles have been imported from Britain and have potentially been running on Irish roads.”

Describing the figures as “absolutely astounding”, Mr Aherne said: “What is even more shocking is that the British authorities notify their Irish counterparts of a Category C and above write-off classification, via the UK’s Vehicle Licensing Certificate (log book).

“However, this data has not made its way from the UK log book to the Irish log book and the impact of this is that Irish drivers are now in the dark about the car’s true history.”

He said that Cartell.ie are calling on the Government to ensure that the Revenue Commissioners transfer all write-off data to the National Vehicle File — past and present — and put in place the necessary safeguards, “which include a new category of write-off system and uploading the necessary information onto the Vehicle Registration Certificate”.

The report found that the Revenue Commissioners, who receive millions of euro in Vehicle Registration Tax annually, are the first to receive write-off classification but there is no process in place to act on this data.

“This is not a blame exercise, but we simply can’t have a situation where people’s lives are put at risk because of poor procedures and what appears to be a general lack of accountability from various organisations and departments,” said Mr Aherne.

“In addition, with the write-off percentages so high in Ireland, it would seem apparent that there are unscrupulous individuals operating and profiting from the lack of adequate procedures, with the ultimate loser being Irish drivers.”