THE OPERATOR of the National Car Test, Applus, has suspended five staff as part of an investigation into the alleged passing of unroadworthy cars in return for bribes.
Applus has given information related to the suspensions to gardaí and a senior officer has been appointed to investigate allegations of fraud and provision of NCT certificates to unroadworthy vehicles.
Three of the suspended staff are based at the Fonthill test centre in Dublin, which is the focus of the investigation, one at Kells, Co Meath, and one at Northpoint in Dublin.
The Government has also announced "a full review" of the taxi industry following a Prime Timeprogramme that showed two taxis fail an NCT test before passing a retest, apparently after a bribe was paid.
On foot of issues raised in the programme, Applus is to interview every staff member about breaches of the company’s code of conduct.
It had already dismissed five other staff for breaches of this code over the last year, unrelated to the current allegations.
The Road Safety Authority awarded the 10-year contract for the car test to Applus in January last year and discussed the allegations at a meeting with the firm yesterday.
Grant Henderson, managing director of Applus Ireland, said it was “extremely disappointed” by the allegations and had initiated a review of the company’s monitoring systems to identify any similar breaches at other test centres.
Minister of State for Transport Alan Kelly said the taxi industry review would “clean up the appalling practices” in some areas of the taxi industry. He said the vast majority of taxi drivers were legitimate operators but were suffering due to competition from “people not operating within the regulations”.
The review will consider increased Garda enforcement of regulations relating to taxi drivers and the provision of new powers to assist gardaí police the sector. Its findings are expected within four months.