Brian Hayes (Fine Gael)

I am glad to speak on this motion and I welcome the Minister of State. I refer to the amendment to the motion, a Dead Sea scroll-type amendment, which came from the Department. The amendment notes, "that the contract between the Minister and the National Car Testing Service requires NCTS to meet specified performance standards." It goes on to refer to a number of items. Who determines them? The Minister of State knows the last PricewaterhouseCoopers' annual report published was for 2001. His Department has not published the 2002 and 2003 reports of independent auditors on the testing regime. Will the Minister of State give a commitment to publish them? What is the Department hiding? Why are these annual reports not in the public domain to allow him to make these fantastic assessments that the NCT's performance is fascinating and customers are delighted with the service? Why has the Department not published the reports? The Minister of State should justify the nonsensical claims in the amendment by publishing the reports. He should give that commitment to the House as it would serve some useful purpose. The Minister of State's predecessor published it in 2001 but it has not been published since. That is why the public is asking questions of us and of Members opposite concerning the operation of this licence.

Although he is not right about many things in life, Senator Wilson is right that we have changed our position on this issue. The rainbow Government took the wrong decision in respect of granting this licence to one operator. We made a mistake and if those on the other side of the House admitted mistakes on a continuous basis, politics would be in a much better state. I listened to Fianna Fáil's Soviet-style spokesperson, Senator Dooley, who seems to think it is impossible to have competition in this area and to have other operators. The United Kingdom has had competition for years. Is anyone suggesting it is some type of basket case in terms of the cars that are on the road there, including Northern Ireland?

There is competition in many other types of public utilities. I think Senator O'Toole made that point on the Order of Business. We have given a licence to a public monopoly. That is bad public policy. We would not do it in other areas; we would not allow one operator to operate a service. Why is it the case in the performance of this important function, of which I am in favour? We need to revisit this issue and to adopt the type of approach in place in the United Kingdom. It leads one to the conclusion that we need to reform this area, and I hope our motion will achieve that aim.

The test criteria should be adopted purely on safety considerations. When the initial test was put in place, if one failed in one area, one was told one did not have to resubmit one's car but that it would have to be resolved by the time the next national car test was done two years later. Cars involved in accidents are not three or four year old cars; they are super-duper, high-speed cars which can reach 120 mph because of the nonsensical drivers behind the wheel. By and large, it is not older cars that are involved in accidents. I have seen no evidence to date to point me in that direction.

I refer to the fail advisory system. That is a Government decision and has nothing to with the franchisee in fairness to it. The Government continues to put more pressure on the consumer by ensuring new categories of items on which one's car can be failed. That is the Government's fault and we must respond to the concerns of people.

Will the Minister of State, who is a new one in the Department, consider abolishing the charge for a second or subsequent test? If one gets one's car serviced and fails on a particular aspect, there should be no charge to come back two weeks or ten days later to have that aspect assessed again. A further charge is unfair and creates the impression that it is a financial racket. By and large, those with older cars are not wealthy people.

I should have declared a vested interest at the start of my contribution. My car, which has a 1998 registration, failed three months ago. The reason it failed was that there was a slight problem with the way one of the back wheels was put on. I appealed the decision to the company and said it was most unfair that I had to bring the car back one week later to show the wheel had been put on correctly. In the letter sent to me, my name was in different type to the body of the letter which lead me to the conclusion that the company gets loads of these letters of complaint and that it simply inserts the name of the person on the letter and sends out a standardised reply. The reply I got did not deal with the complaint I made. One does not appeal to an independent third party but to the company — the only company, the Soviet-style monopoly Senator Dooley recommended to the House. We need to introduce some reform in this regard.