Nearly half of vehicles being tested at Clare’s only NCT centre have failed so far this year.
The failure rate in the Ennis centre has jumped by more than 10% in the last 12 months.
There have been over 35,000 vehicles put through the NCT in Ennis so far this year.
Over 15,000 of these have failed, with a further 1,512 deemed to have failed ‘dangerously’ – which means it’s illegal to drive the car until the defect is repaired.
The centre was closed for around three months like other testing facilities across the country during the initial outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and has had to deal with a backlog of tests since then.
The 47% failure rate at the Quin Road facility compares to a steady rate of around the 35% mark in the three years prior, since such records were retained by the RSA.
It means Ennis now has one of the highest failure rates in the region, with the major testing centres of Limerick and Galway at around 7% lower despite testing more vehicles.
Clare’s only testing centre has a failure rate around 5% higher than the national average, with around 1.5 million vehicles being tested so far this year.
