‘Radical moves’ needed to smash Northern Ireland’s MOT logjam as DUP man wonders what happened to idea of biennial tests

DUP man Jonny Buckley made the comments amid mounting pressure on the roads minister, Sinn Fein’s John O’Dowd, to take action to tackle the backlog of tests.

Mr Buckley was last year appointed chairman of Stormont’s infrastructure committee, in charge of shining a spotlight on how Northern Ireland’s transport network functions and grilling the minister and his officials.

Mr Buckley said the police are currently dealing with an upsurge of motorists who lack the right paperwork to be on the road, adding that the situation is so serious that “I am concerned about it becoming an economic issue”.

He told the News Letter: “The problem with MOTs, we all understand the root cause of that – the Covid pandemic.

“But that being said, we’re a year-and-a-half into MOT testing. We’ve heard very little from minister O’Dowd as to how he’s going to address this.

“If we don’t deal with the issue we quite literally will have a case where a majority of vehicles on the road aren’t going to be in a roadworthy state.

“They said they’ve opened this up to Sunday appointments and other appointments, but it’s not having the effect which is needed.

“There needs to be a much more radical approach.”

BIENNIAL APPROACH:

When it comes to what kind of radical thinking he had in mind, he pointed out that a consultation was done under previous roads minister Nichola Mallon into the notion of testing vehicles every two years (biennially) instead of every single year.

Right now, cars and motorbikes are first tested when they get to four years old, and annually thereafter.

In February this year, the Department of Infrastructure revealed that there had been over 1,200 responded to the consultation, and that 80% thought cars should be tested biennially, and 77% thought the same for motorbikes.

Mr Buckley said a similar system operates on the continent. He also suggested testing could be made contingent on the number of miles a car does.

Mr Buckley said he’s not advocating these as policies, but they are “possible solutions” for the minister to consider, adding: “Whilst they procrastinate on this issue, the problem only gets worse.”

The Department of Infrastructure was asked what the minister plans to do about the MOT backlog, but no response was received at time of writing.

FIVE MONTH WAIT AT SOME CENTRES:

These were the earliest available slots for an MOT test for a normal private car provided by the NI Direct website last night:

Enniskillen centre: January 24

Balmoral: January 21

Newtownards: January 18

Lisburn: January 13

Ballymena: January 13

Coleraine: January 10

Larne: November 24

Cookstown: November 22

Downpatrick: November 11

Mallusk: November 3

Omagh: September 6

Armagh: August 30

Craigavon: August 26

(Note: re-starting the online booking process will bring up different dates each time)