Volkswagen Ireland has confirmed that just under 80,000 cars sold in Ireland are fitted with the “defeat device”, VW’s emissions data manipulation software and up to 30,000 imports may also be affected writes Geraldine Herbert
The specific numbers of vehicles in Ireland affected per brand are as follows:
Volkswagen Passenger Cars – 34,387
Audi – 16,485
SEAT – 4,365
ŠKODA – 16,004
Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles – 8,107
Owners will be contacted directly by VW Ireland if their car is affected but in the meantime a website will be set up allowing concerned owners to submit their cars details and discover whether their cars are one of those being recalled.
What to do if your car is affected? Once a recall is announced there are a number of steps that must be implemented. Firstly VW get a list of chassis numbers of cars included which were supplied to the Irish market and this is sent to the Department of Transport who oversee the National Vehicle and Driver File (NVDF) database in Shannon. From this a list of current owners is compiled. The “defeat device” was installed as far back as 2009 so these cars may have changed hands at least once since then. Owners will then receive a letter informing them of the next steps.
How long is this likely to take? Given the number of cars involved contacting every owner is likely to take at least six weeks. In addition the actual solution or “fix” that VW will implement is not yet agreed upon. The Global VW Group is to submit their proposed software solution to the appropriate authorities later this month for approval. Until this is sanctioned it is too soon to say both how long the fix will take and what it will involve.
So I can do nothing at the moment if my car is affected? Unfortunately not, even if you determine your car is one of those fitted with the “defeat device” via the website until you formally receive a letter from the VW group with the proposed course of action you can do nothing.
Will it have an impact on my motor tax? The emissions in question are Nitrous oxide whereas our motor tax is based on Co2, so it will have no impact on tax.
Remind my again what the emission recall is all about? The Environmental Protection Agency, in the US discovered 482,000 Volkswagen vehicles were fitted with sophisticated defeat device software, which masks the NOx emissions by switching engines to a cleaner mode when they were undergoing official testing. VW later admitted that up to 11 million cars worldwide were fitted with the same “defeat device”
Will long term resale values of VW’s be affected? At this stage it is too early to tell. In the past global recalls have had virtually no impact on long term resale values, but this recall also raises questions about the future of diesel engines.
Watch Geraldine Herbert discuss the VW Recall on the UTV News
Geraldine Herbert
4th October, 2015
