At the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI) annual dinner in the Burlington Hotel, last Thursday night, the SIMI President, Mike Finlay called on the Government to review the current vehicle registration system.
The current situation, where two-thirds of new cars are sold in the first four months of the year, causes huge funding and staffing challenges for the industry.
Such a front-loaded new car selling season, also presents a high risk for the Government. A slow start to the year leaves little chance for recovery and will result in very poor exchequer returns in terms of VAT and VRT.
Speaking at the dinner, Finlay said, “We favour only a very slight change to the current system, simply the addition of an early or late identifier added to the current format to indicate the time of the year of first registration.
We would like to see the added possibility for car owners to be able to re-register a car in their own county of residence, in the event that they buy a used car previously registered in another county. Many car buyers like to have their own county registration on their cars.”
Mike Finlay also commented on pick-up in used car values since the start of the year.
He said, “the strengthening of used car values is good news for car owners. The value of trade-in cars is now actually increasing which means that for consumers the cost to change their car is reducing. This is good news all round.”
