ANALYSIS:Answering all your motoring queries, by Michael McAleer
From M Mag: What are the registration and legal requirement for gifting my six-year-old low mileage Golf to my daughter, who is permanently resident in the UK? My NCT is valid until March 2010.
The good news is that, so long as a car is more than six months on the road and/or with more than 6,000km on the clock, there is no import duty payable when re-registering it in Britain. The bad news is that there is a good deal of paperwork involved.
You have to fill in VAT form 414 - available online from hmrc.gov.uk and file it along with the other paperwork to the Driver Vehicle Licensing Authority (DVLA).
There are some general fees to be paid. You need to get the Certificate for Conformity for the vehicle from the manufacturers. If you can't get this, then you will need to get a Single Vehicle Approval (SVA) test completed in Britain. This costs about £200 (currently about €224).
You will also need to get the vehicle through an MOT test, costing about £30 (€33), as the NCT certificate is not recognised in Britain. Finally, you will face a charge of £55 (€61) registration fee with the Vehicle Licensing Authority in the area where your daughter is living. She will also need to pay the road tax and show valid insurance for the car in order to get registration.
From R Boardman: I would like to raise a point regarding the availability of air pressure pumps in service stations.
As you may be aware the correct air pressure in the tyres of a vehicle can affect its handling, braking, steering and road holding in various road conditions if the tyres are under- or over-inflated.
Over the past few months I have noted the extreme difficulty in finding a correctly operating air pressure line at service stations.
When I did find one, it was sheer luck if the regulator functioned correctly. In many service stations, especially ones which are are now independent, air lines were not available.
Considering the huge importance of this issue in saving road users' lives, service stations should be forced to provide correctly operating air pressure lines and water.
Perhaps in the meantime a list of service stations where air lines are available would be listed on the AA website.
The issue certainly warrants more attention, particularly in terms of road safety. Unfortunately tyres rarely catch the public's attention, at least until they skid off the road or aquaplane.
Every few months surveys hit our desk showing the disregard Irish motorists have for tread depth or tyre pressure. We can all quickly identify a motoring friend who probably doesn't even know how to measure their car's tyre pressure.
Conor Faughnan of the AA Ireland says your suggestion is very useful, and something they may consider for the website in the New Year.
"A lot of service stations don't provide air or water these days and are simply convenience shops that also sell petrol," says Faughnan. "It's something that certainly needs to be addressed. There are regulations governing this area, but it is not terribly well supervised."
And as he rightly points out: "A bigger problem perhaps is the volume of motorists who never bother to check the pressure in their tyres at all."
Many of the franchised stations do offer air pressure pumps, and there was an interesting move recently by Topaz to keep their pumps in working order.
The recently rebranded Topaz chain operates over 300 stations. Of these 108 are wholly owned by the firm and at all these stations air pressure is offered to customers.
There was, however, complaints recently about the fact a €2 deposit was required to operate the pressure pumps. However, a spokesman explains that, as with shopping trolleys, the deposit is returned once the pump nozzle is put back in place after use.
One forecourt manager claimed to have replaced the nozzle 50 times in one year due to motorists carelessly discarding the pump on the ground and others driving over it. As a result, a deposit was introduced to ensure people took better care of the pump. The money is returned to customers after use, says a spokesman.