Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)
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Question 85: To ask the Minister for Finance the reason it is mandatory to put cars through a national car test before scrapping them under the new car scrappage scheme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [13477/10]

Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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I am advised by the Revenue Commissioners that under the terms of the scrappage scheme, as provided for in section 107 of the Finance Bill 2010, as passed by Dail Eireann, a number of conditions must be satisfied in order for a person to qualify for relief from vehicle registration tax (VRT) when a new passenger car with CO2 emissions of not more than 140g/km (i.e. CO2 band A or B) is purchased and registered and another passenger car, over ten years old, is scrapped.

The principle rationale behind the scrappage scheme was to take older, less environmentally friendly, and less safe cars off the roads. Consequently, many of the qualifying conditions were included to ensure that the cars qualifying for the scrappage scheme were actually in use on the road up to the time of scrappage, as opposed to being vehicles that essentially had already been taken off road and which, for example, were simply being stored in "scrap yards" and other locations.

To this end, one of the conditions to be satisfied for qualification for the scrappage scheme is that the vehicle for scrapping must have a current valid national car test (NCT), or one that has expired no more than 90 days immediately before the date of scrappage. Alternatively, in order to cater for cases where a vehicle may have recently failed an NCT test, the vehicle must have been presented for and failed the NCT in the previous 6 months.

The "NCT requirement" for the scrappage scheme, therefore, is simply a provision to ensure that the vehicles being scrapped as part of the scheme comply with the underlying principle that only vehicles that are genuinely taken off the road are eligible for the scrappage repayment.