A new survey of motorist carried out on behalf of Aviva Insurance Ireland DAC has found that the majority of driver (64%) would like to see changes to Ireland’s national car testing system that would enable motor garages across the country to perform the tests, rather than dedicated NCT test centres only.

When asked, motorists widely supported bringing Ireland’s car testing in line with the UK’s MOT model, which would also increase the validity of the NCT cert from 12 months past the expiry of the last NCT, to 12 months past the date of issue of the new cert. 

The Aviva survey looked into driver’s views on the Irish system in the wake of significant backlogs in test centres throughout the country over the last two years. In 2022, the estimated average wait time to be invited for a car test was 15.5 weeks and, in November 2022, there were 14,947 people in Dublin waiting to be invited for their test. 

The research of over 1,000 adults throughout the country also looked at what drivers will and won’t do when it comes to car maintenance. The top three car maintenance tasks that motorists in Ireland will undertake were revealed as checking windscreen washer fluid (71%); checking tyre pressure (68%); and washing the car (67%). 8% of drivers said that they do not perform any basic car maintenance checks on their car.