Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Okay. Mr. Synnott mentioned the point about the diagnostic issue. I went to a garage one time and it gave me a quote for nearly €1,000 worth of everything and anything from suspenders and constant velocity, CV, joints and CV boots to all four tyres and everything else. I went down for the NCT and I needed one CV boot cover or something, which cost me approximately €140. That is the problem. I do not know if it is for the RSA. I am not saying every garage is bad. I am certainly not saying that at all but there are certainly people. I had other tyre dealers. I have seen better cars fail and worse pass in terms of tyres. I get that it is a visual inspection and people can be a little bit tricky or less tricky on it. That is a problem as to why so many people go for the NCT and say they are not spending €1,000 on something they may not need. If a person goes for the NCT and it finds nothing wrong or something small wrong, he or she goes back and fixes it. One time, the Baile Átha Cliath sign on my number plate had faded and that was why I failed. I got a sticker for 50p at the time and fixed it. There is an issue for the motor trade and maybe Applus and the RSA. All they are trying to do, and I want to touch on road safety in a minute, is have better, safer and more reliable cars. I know that is what Applus' system is doing but there is a challenge as to people overestimating the level of work and looking for extra work that does not appear to need to be done when someone goes to get the NCT done. I know the NCT is for safety and that it does not necessarily test everything. At the same time, however, it does test a lot. That is just an observation.

In terms of the ten weeks, and this perhaps for Mr. Waide, this is where we wish to get to. Are we happy, though, that the waiting time target should be ten weeks? Should it not perhaps be five weeks or four weeks? Should we not be looking at that possibility? We need, obviously, to get to ten weeks first in terms of the lead-in time. We should be able to get an NCT test-----