Absolutely not, the UK has treated fraud much more seriously over the years than has the Irish government. Knowingly selling a car that is clocked or a write off has been illegal in the UK since the introduction of the new Fraud Act in 2006.
Unlike Ireland the UK authorities implement these laws and there are many examples of car dealers and private individuals that have been prosecuted for selling clocked cars. Cartell draws attention to the difference in attitude to prosecuting car fraud in the UK vs Ireland here. Clocking was legal in Ireland up until Jan 15th 2014! Read the Irish Times here
Despite this no prosecutions have been brought against any dealer in Ireland to date.
In the UK they have the National Mileage Register (NMR) which is owned and run by HPI Ltd, this register contains over 140 million mileages for the UK car stock. Every time a history check is completed on a car the person requesting the history check must input the current mileage on the car, should a lower mileage, for example, be entered for a 3 year old car than was entered a 1 year before by another person buying a history check on that car then a warning is placed on the vehicle and an NMR check is required to remove the warning.
The NMR check will contact the other individuals that have input the different mileages to establish the facts and a report is then produced. This provides unique information to UK car buyers in advance of buying.
No such database exists for Irish cars.
Other methods of checking mileage include MOT and NCT records, in the UK a new car has its first MOT after 3 years, in Ireland the NCT only occurs after 4 years. UK cars appear on the system earlier than Irish cars which means they are easier to check.
It is much easier to clock a car with no records and again the risk in Ireland is mainly for new cars upto 4 years old, because there are no records of them to check against. In general there are much better systems in place to prevent car fraud in the UK than Ireland and the laws they have, are in place for longer and importantly, they are enforced. That doesn’t stop car clocking but it makes it much more difficult to do in the UK than Ireland.
Cartell and Motorcheck have spent a small fortune in marketing trying to scare the Irish public about UK Cars, this focus on UK Cars is groundless and if anything an Irish car provides a much greater risk. Marketing is not about facts but about selling car history checks! They do it very well!
Ask yourself, which system would you prefer to buy from, the Irish or UK system?
We can provide a full HPI history check for €15, HPI are the industry leaders and began the first history checks back in 1946