Mr. James Maguire:

The NTA has not listened to us in years. Things could be very much streamlined. The committee might have heard me say that, come January, February and March, about 4,000 vehicles will come off the road if their drivers cannot raise the finance because of the age of the vehicle, so we need the age of the vehicle. That has to be stressed when the representation from the NTA comes before the committee. The age rule has to be extended to 15 years. It covers a lot of things. It avoids the complication of the EV grants because if you get an EV grant and your licence is due on 31 December, your licence goes out of date, which disbars you from taking up that grant. It should be remembered that there are buses and coaches from 2004 out there. They all go for DOE tests, and when they pass those tests they are safer. They have seat belts. We have cars with 131 and 121 licence plates. They are lovely Mercedes, Lexus, Avensis - the whole lot. They go through an NCT and a suitability test. That should suffice.

We are in different times now. We are only coming out of Covid. This has to be done, and it is very important that the committee stress that to the NTA.