MINISTER FOR Tourism Mary Hanafin has suggested the car hire industry should consider looking at good quality second-hand cars to make up the shortage in available cars for the tourist season.

At Dáil question time, Ms Hanafin said that while the industry had always previously insisted on new cars, there were thousands of high quality second-hand cars “on the forecourts of the garages”. There “may also be potential for the car hire industry to use cars with lower CO2 emissions because these are obviously cheaper in VRT terms”.

But Fine Gael spokeswoman Olivia Mitchell warned that it could cause “reputational damage”.

She said that in any other EU country “you get a new car rather than a second-hand car. If you start going down that road of hiring second-hand cars, we can forget the tourist industry.” But the Minister said “a good quality second-hand relatively new car – I do not refer to one that is five or 10 years old – would be better than no car at all if it is offered at a good rate.” Asked whether she would consider a direct subsidy to encourage the industry to provide cheaper cars, Ms Hanafin said: “If we were to do that now it would come directly from other projects because no extra funding is available”.

She added that when a subsidy was introduced in 1992, “the average payment was approximately €900, but gave only 1,260 cars extra. Even the whole value of the subsidy scheme is questionable.” Ms Mitchell said the problem in the car hire sector resulted from a “triple whammy” of “the scrappage scheme, the general recession and the lack of credit in the economy”. A maximum of 10,000 to 12,500 cars were available, when at least 20,000 were needed.

“Already, cancellations of holidays are resulting, particularly from the American market. Obviously, Americans come for longer than a weekend in most cases and approximately 45 per cent of them hire a car. Of those, the vast majority need automatic transmission cars, the shortage of which is even greater. If we are to lose that kind of business, it will have a significant impact throughout the country.”