Brennan’s car test policy is way out of focus

I TOOK my wife’s car for the NCT in South Dublin recently. I was dreading it since the new rule that a car should be failed if its lights were out of alignment, according to the testing computer and a repeat test would require a further fee €27.20.

The recommendation two years ago was that the lights were too low; now they failed because they were too high. When I first heard of the lights failing the NCT I suspected that this was a money racket - the invention of a government suffering from squandermania. Did Transport Minister Seamus Brennan introduce it to fund the gigantic overspend on the construction of roads?

The whole country, from Malin to Mizen, is being subjected to this penal tax. Is the motorist not being hammered enough in purchase taxes, road taxes, taxes on fuel, insurance, and so on?

As one disgruntled motorist told me: “If the motorist is left with any money in his pocket, the system is failing!”

A knowledgeable young man in Co Meath told me recently that cars belonging to clients of the larger registered garages, which are equipped with excellent computers for focusing lights, fail the NCT because of the variation in outcomes.

If this is so, how can we expect the mechanics employed in small garages to focus lights to the satisfaction of NCT engineers?

It is easy for Mr Brennan to sign a document making it legal for allegedly wrongly focused lights to fail the NCT when he is in receipt of a hugely inflated ministerial salary and has the convenience of a chauffeur-driven state car.

A car today is not a luxury because of the wretched state of public transport; but the minister’s policy, whether he means it or not, seems to have one main aim: to drive the poorer motorist off the road.

Motoring experts tell me that lights lose their correct focus when the vehicle is driven over a bump or into a hole in one of our many trenched roads.

If so, why harp on lighting that is only slightly off the mark and penalise the motorist?

The idea of an NCT has merit; but the latest innovation must have lost Fianna Fáil many votes in the local elections.

If Mr Brennan does not abolish this deplorable tax, or have the staff of the NCT centres that are equipped with allegedly accurate light focusing computers set the lights correctly for €5 or €10, then Fianna Fáil and the PDs will be in for an even greater setback at the next general election.

Daniel MacCarron

Westfield Park

Bray

Co Wicklow.