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THE ROAD SAFETY Authority (RSA) has instructed the National Car Testing Service to release test results of a car involved in a road collision to the mother of a woman who was killed in it.
Paula Murphy had requested the results of a test on her daughter’s car which veered out of control and crashed in Cork in December 2012. 26-year-old Amanda O’Flaherty had been driving to visit her sister in Cobh when she collided with another vehicle.
The inquest into her death found that the car, which she had bought six months earlier, was not roadworthy but had undergone an NCT the month before she purchased it. Her mother had asked for the NCT results but the request was refused because her daughter had not been the registered owner of the car at the time.
However a spokesperson for the Road Safety Authority has told TheJournal.ie this morning that it has now “instructed the NCT to issue that certificate to that lady by lunchtime today”.
“The RSA is deeply unhappy with the way the NCT have handled Mrs Murphy’s request,” he said. “We had previously requested that it should be released and have now intervened to instruct them to release it immediately.”
“It goes without saying that we would like to apologise to Mrs Murphy as well for any additional hurt and aggravation caused by this saga,” he added.
Responding to the news today, Paula Murphy told TheJournal.ie that she was “over the moon”.
She has been told that the results have been sent out in the post and she should receive them in the next couple of days.
“It’s so important for me to get it for myself and my peace of mind and to give closure,” she said. “I’d been at it for the last couple of months and I wondered will I ever get to the bottom of it so it’s great.”
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Sickening, all NCT results should be publicly available. No advantage can be gained in obtaining another person’s results. Public safety is supposed to be one of the main reasons for an NCT. Not just another tax
Cover up culture.
As a result of a law suit culture
there’s no lawsuit culture in this country, you have been brainwashed by crass adverts and the lies of insurance companies.
The greatest leeches in society are insurance companies.
Agreed Truth – the term “compensation culture” was invented by those who stand to lose money due to their own negligence, or the negligence of those they insure.
i took my car in for its nct in march, they failed it saying there a problem with the rear offside wheel bearing, i took the car to a friend who has a gararge, he checked it over and said there was nothing wrong , so i booked it back in for a re-test , nothing had been done to the car apart from it going up on a ramp and having its wheels checked , the same tester took the car and came back with-in five minutes and passed it ! i contacted the nct website and told them what had happened and heard nothing back since. i didnt even have to pay for the re-test as i had it back within a couple of days . the whole system here is crazy, much better in the u.k where certified gararges carry out the tests , my sister in laws car test is due on the 22nd september, she applied for a test date in august and has to wait until the end of november before she can get it done, too much ‘red tape’ involved here, why is it necessary to produce your licence or some form of photographic id to get your car tested ? if it was your insurance cert (to prove your insured to drive the car) then fair enough ,but what does it matter who brings it in for its test ?, its the car thats being tested not the person bringing it in.
It says it all when you can get more points for not having an NCT cert than driving up a motorway the wrong way. The NCT is a money maker for the Government. If you have really badly worn brake pads and discs the test won’t even pick that up. The whole test is a complete joke!
NCT is a money racket.. If it was designed for public safety then i wouldnt have been failed cos my reg plate was the “wrong size”.. Seriously
Rip Amanda.. I hope her mother gets treated better by the NCT people this time around
NCT was subject to a Primetime Investigates TV program a few years back also, is there something going on?
That was for the practice of people leaving cash in the car for the tester as an incentive to get it passed….
Gladly we had some firings as a result of the investigation and hopefully that behaviour is a lot less common now.
corrupt personnel were passing out defective cars. is it still going on.?
Sent out in the post!!! The cheek of them. As a gesture they should have sent it via a courier as a way to highlight that they take the issue seriously.
The NCT is a joke, I bought a dodgy car recently that had passed the NCT in March, the garage I brought it to said there is no way it would have passed the NCT
The NCT is a joke , I had to change an indicator bulb because it wasnt orange enough, the colour coating on the bulb started to flake away, they refused to give me a certificate until it was changed,
If it wasn’t orange then it’s not an indicator
It is a joke. We all saw the programme on RTE about what went on in the NCT centres. Still going on. I have seen the nods and winks.
Gavin if you had replaced the proper bulb done the job probably then you would have got your cert blame your own ignorance of the law All the red thumbs for me are proof that drivers are not taking the law seriously .
If anything untoward is found, do you think there will be any sanctions against the company that runs the NCT service or even the ‘examiner’? How could a car be defective so quickly when it still had at least a year left before the next test!
the way they get around this issue is by saying that the n.c.t is ONLY based on the testers opinions as to the cars condition at the time of testing , if you drove out of the center and the wheels came away from the axel they would just say, it was ok when we tested it .
@Keith Ellis: Anything could have happened to damage the car after it left the test centre e.g., hitting a pothole, hitting a kerb, having parts changed or replaced after the test etc. The test only certifies the condition of the car at the actual time of the test, the NCT can’t be held responsible for anything that happens afterwards.
Nct is a scam! Thy could wreck your car and they are not liable for the damage! That ain’t fair
There should be two parts to a vehicle registration or log book. One signed by the new owner and sent in to the Dept with the sellers information, name, address, phone and the other sent in by previous owner. We need to stop unscrupulous car sellers fobbing people off with dangerous vehicles while they are giving back handers to NCT staff to pass vehicles.
My car passed the NCT the day I bought it,needed a new engine a week later,thankfully the garaged paid for all costs and repairs but that’s not the point. How can a car get a years NCT and need a whole new engine a week later…
@Ash: NCT checks safety features and Co2 emissions. Even a new car can need a whole new engine after a week especially if it driven hard when cold and blows a head gasket or if it had a loss of coolant or oil and the driver kept on driving.
What I don’t get about the whole NCT thing is…what does undersized number plates and other visual parts of the car have to do with road worthiness??..
And, I’ve seen on a few occasions people getting their results with the guy telling them that the car is unsuitable for the road, then giving the keys and letting them drive away….
I’ve had cars fail on busions and things, only to go away, take out said part and clean it, put it back in and car passes!!…
RIP to the woman and all that but im not sure what an NCT cert from 7 months before the accident is going to prove. The driver is the one responsible for the condition of a vehicle,
If it was borderline then the degradation could have occurred in the 7 months but if it is wildly out it could suggest the test was not as wholesome as intended
and if the vehicle was new out of the show room an equal amount of degradation could have occurred. its all down to the driver. and the NCT is not “wholesome”. its a tax collecting organisation that test to see if cars are somewhat roadworthy at the exact time of test.
NCT should by and large be scrapped. I had a car where likewise it passed the NCT and only a couple of months later one of the wheels came off.
The NCT was bought in to comply with EU requirements.
It can only give a report on a car on the day it is presented.
Just because a car passes the test it doesn’t mean that the car can be used for the next two years without any maintenance.
It cannot give an opinion on how long the engine or other parts will last.
They do set out how a car should be presented and they can hardly be blamed if lights are defective or number plates are the wrong size.
Overall it has helped to reduce the number of dangerous cars on the road.
Which also helps to reduce the number of people killed or seriously injured.
Went for nct last year. Guy was at my back wheel for ages. Failed nct on minor things and left then couple miles down the road and wheel went flat, when i brought it to garage it turned out he broke the valve and had put chewing gum in the valve. Went back to centre they fobbed me off with complaints procedure went through this and never heard anything back..
The NCT is an absolute disgrace. Just like the driving test – it’s an inconsistently judged racket.
I know of car that failed a driving test in one county, had no work done to it, and passed a test ten days later in another county. It’s typical of the “a nod is as good as a wink”, cute hoor culture that is prevalent on this island.
@Peter Branigan: The drive to the other county may have improved the Co2 emissions.
the testers have to test a lot more cars now than when they started. less time.for a test means it cant be getting.done properly.
if its to test road worthiness/safety. thats all they should be testing for and testing in a detailed way.. not licence plate soze and small irrelevant things.
My 2010 car failed because emissions was 8.8 . I went to the main dealer where it is serviced,they checked it on their computer and found nothing wrong. They then checked the emissions and it was 1.0 .I paid for retest having done nothing with the car and it passed with a reading of 0.8.
My fathers car failed on emissions and it was a low emissions car.
He was told he needed to drive it in the wrong gear up a steep incline regularly in order to keep the emissions as the car states it produces.
He drives on motorways regularly and is a professional driver so the advice seemed odd to him (I hope I related it correctly, I know absolutely nothing about cars – so I may have got the instructions wrong).
Of course, when he brought it back it passed. He’s never had a fail on his not before he’s kinda anally retentive about keeping his car in tip top condition so your story would cause me to question the first test results..
Never failed the nct damn autocorrect..
Correct .. A lot of modern diesels have urea injected I to the catalyst in order to bring down emissions and if your a gentle driver and don’t do too much highway but a lot of in town city driving then the catalyst won’t burn the exhaust residue you see the catalyst has an auto burn function and this activates if there is enough exhaust accumulated and you can see that with increased smoke but not a weekly occurance . I found this out from Clarkes Garage Bandon with a Peugeot 307 we had . They
Pre tested it and it was fine in the garage but when NCT test it failed due to high emissions so the mechanic advised I get it into 3 rd gear and drive the arse off it out the road – this apparently can trigger the auto burn and sure enough we got a lot of smoke . Back up to center and bingo emissions were 0.7 as compared to 7.8 at precious NCT . So the more modern the cars become the bizarre things we have to do to keep them on the right side of the law …….that’s progress
I bought a car a few months back that had supposedly passed the NCT a couple of weeks before. They guy said it may need a new brake pad on the drivers side front wheel. I brought it to a garage and it turned out it needed the whole breaking system replaced. Cost me 600 quid and the guy said there was no way it would have passed an NCT in the condition it was in. Someone has a scam going.
Had a car a few years ago that failed on brake lines. I took it home painted them with old engine oil, swept the shed and then covered them with the dust. Brought it back down and it passes. Also car was over 10 years old but I was given a 2 year cert (happy days I suppose). Car was put threw 2 ncts after that and nothing was said about the brake lines.
The only reason it passed was cos they obviously couldn’t see the brake lines. It’s good there are drivers on the road that maintain rusty brake lines like you do tho
People like you should have points or licence revoked for such actions. That is the most idiot thing I’ve ever heard of an adult doing. I sincerly hope you realise the danger you have put on other road users.
People like me. Ok then. My point basically being that there were nothing wrong with the brake lines in the first place. Like I said it went threw to nct’s after that. Which because I got a two year cert for the first one means that the brake lines passed for the next 3 years. Same ones no tricks to try and cover up anything.
The NCT is limited in what it can tell you. People place too much credence in it. I wouldnt buy a car without it but would not expect the car to be guaranteed in any way by it. That said, I got new brakes fitted and a week later I found that the bolts of the calipers were missing. It had an NCT in the meantime.
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