Thinking of trading in your old banger for a brand new model? Read on to see if your car qualifies for the government scrappage scheme.
Amidst all the doom and gloom in last year’s budget – people complaining about various benefit cuts and public sector workers whining about supposed brutal treatment at the hands of the government penny-pinchers – people may have missed the introduction of a new scrappage scheme introduced in an attempt to boost the floundering sales of new cars and get some older, trashier and more unreliable models off the road.
The average punter is probably aware that to avail of the scrappage scheme, the car being traded in must be at least ten years old, but may not be aware of the other conditions that apply. Like anything government related or anything that sounds too good to be true, the truth often lies in the small print.
Terms and Conditions
Here’s an attempt to explain the scheme in layman’s terms.
First of all the basics: The owner of a car ten years or older from 1 January of this year is entitled to a €1,500 cut in Vehicle Registration Tax (VRT) if they replace said car with a brand new vehicle that falls in VRT Road Tax Band A or B and with CO2 emissions of less than 140g/km.
That bit of spiel might spark fear amongst potential buyers that the car they desire wouldn’t qualify, but approximately two thirds of new cars bought in 2009 were eligible for the scheme, including diesel family models such as the Ford Mondeo and VW Passat, larger vehicles such as Mercedes E-Class and BMW 5 Series and sports cars such as the two litre Audi TT.
The 2 litre diesel Audi TT qualifies for the government scrappage scheme
The car must have been registered for at least 18 months before the scrappage date, registered to the same name for the same period and insured for at least 12 of those 18 months. This applies to imported cars as well as those purchased on Irish soil. The registered owner of the car being scrapped also has to be the owner of the new car.
The legislation regarding this particular clause is quite strict. Even if the car has been in the family for a while or registered in the name of a spouse or a friend rather than your own, it still must be the registered owner of the old car that registers as the owner of the new car.
NCT
The car has to be scrapped within 60 days, before or after the registration of the new vehicle and it also needs to have a valid NCT certificate, or one that’s no more than 90 days out of date on the day that the car is being scrapped.
A car that has failed an NCT within six months of the scrappage date also qualifies for the scheme, however, so pretty much any car will be eligible once you drag it along to the local testing centre, as long as it fulfils all of the above criteria of course.All cars must be scrapped at the exotically named ‘End of Life Vehicles Authorised Treatment Facility’, but don’t worry, the dealer will take care of all that for you if you’ll let them.
Before it was introduced in Ireland at the beginning of this year, the scrappage scheme had already been hugely successful in the UK and Germany and the trend has already repeated itself in Ireland. The number of new cars sold in Ireland in the first five months of this year, 57,898 has surpassed the total number of new cars sold in 2009.
Now that all the essential and boring stuff is taken care of, check out what models offer the best value for money under the scrappage scheme here.
Conor Heneghan
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