Tom Hayes (Tipperary South, Fine Gael)
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Question 218: To ask the Minister for Finance the position regarding a family car; and if a family will qualify for the car scrappage scheme where one spouse has owned the car for more than five years and has the car in their name but where this car is insured under the name of the other spouse, and where insurance companies have not historically required or needed the ownership of the car to be changed in order to change the named driver in the past. [5034/10]

Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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The draft legislation as outlined on the Revenue Commissioners website (and reproduced below); shows that the scheme contains a number of conditions which must be fully complied with in order to qualify for the scrappage allowance. The car being scrapped:

must be registered in the State in the name of the registered owner of the new car for at least 18 months previous to the date of scrappage;

must be ten years old or more from the date of first registration;

must be scrapped on or after 10 December 2009;

must be scrapped within 60 days of the date of the new car being registered, or have been scrapped within 60 days immediately before the date of the new car being registered;

must have a valid NCT test certificate, or one that has expired no more than 90 days immediately before the date of scrappage or documentation to indicate that it has been presented for and failed an NCT roadworthiness test in the previous six months;

must have been insured for use on the road in the name of the registered owner for at least 12 months in the 18 months immediately prior to the date of scrappage.

The Deputy will appreciate that with any legislation, there is the possibility for what are commonly referred to as 'hard cases'. However, as with any legislatively-based scheme, the letter of the law must be implemented. Should an exception be made in one case, it would be difficult to justify the full implementation of the rules in other cases.

The scheme was designed in this way to provide simplicity of interpretation, clarity of eligibility, and absolute consistency of implementation of the scheme by insisting that the same name must appear as the owner of the scrapped car, the policy of insurance issued in respect of the scrapped car and the registration documents for the new car.