Jeff Aherne, Director of Cartell.ie, featured on Cork’s 96FM today in connection with vehicle clocking. Jeff was asked to give listeners an insight into the difficulties associated with clocked vehicles. He was asked to respond to news published that a court settlement has been ordered for €1,500 after a Cork-based car buyer bought a vehicle believing it had 131,000 miles on the clock when in actual fact the vehicle had 198,000 miles. This news from Cork follows the Beere case late last year when Gardai successfully prosecuted a South Dublin-based car dealer for sale of clocked vehicles – a case heralded as the first of its type in the country (read our article about this)

Yet despite the result in that case there is no offence of clocking a motor vehicle on the statute book in Ireland. While there is consumer legislation which affords limited protection to the Irish consumer, and while the Beere case was prosecuted as a case of sale by deception, there is no actual offence of ‘clocking’. This means Irish law is out of sync with UK law on this particular point. Cartell sought to remedy the matter by introducing a Bill to criminalise the clocking of a motor vehicle in June 2010. However our attempts were shot down at Committee stage in the Oireachtas – despite the support of the Labour Party.

In any event we are continuing to raise awareness about this particular issue. You can read our story here – which received extensive coverage in the media – which shows the number of clocked cars in the country broken down by county.

You can view Cork’s 96FM website here.