THEY SAY a car can tell you a lot about its owner.
One assumes a Honda Civic hatchback kitted out with a racing stripe, alloy wheels and tinted windows belongs to a young man with something of a need for speed.
A Toyota Previa people carrier, with baby seats in the back, is most likely owned by somebody with a growing family.
But what do the owners of a sporty silver 2004 BMW X5 SUV and a functional white 2006 Opel Combo CDTI van have in common?
The BMW has business cards advertising the work of a compliance specialist on the front seat, a best of Rod Stewart CD sitting just below the dash and novelty-sized piggy bank abandoned on the back seat.
Among the items littering the Opel are a Tweety Bird air freshener, a Joe Cocker album, an empty packet of butter cookies and a sign suggesting the owner has an involvement in a dairy business.
What these vehicles, a range of hatchbacks, saloons and trucks parked in the same west Dublin yard, share is a strong chance that they will be crushed and discarded inside the next six weeks unless their owners come to claim them.
They have all been impounded by gardaí under Section 41 of the Road Traffic Act because their owners have decided not to, forgotten to, refused to, or cannot afford to pay the appropriate tax or insurance.
Section 41 entitles gardaí to take a vehicle off the road if they discover that tax or insurance has been left unpaid for three months or more.
Section 20 of the same Act says that they can also impound a vehicle if it is deemed to no longer be roadworthy.
Last year, a total of 2,154 vehicles were impounded and sent to the Garda vehicle compound in Tallaght for not having tax or insurance.
Some 1,687 of these were collected by their owners, but 467 were not, and ended up being taken away and scrapped – in what gardaí describe as an “environmentally-friendly fashion”.
The same problem persists across the State. In the 26 counties last year, gardaí took possession of 27,161 vehicles under Section 41 – an increase of 2,000 on the previous year – of which some 5,000 were crushed.
Motorists who have their car impounded under Section 41 are charged €125 for the first 24 hours or part thereof and €35 per 24 hours thereafter.
A Garda spokesman says that the impounding of cars under Section 41 is not a money generating exercise but a means of trying to make the roads safer.
He says that a lot of discretion is shown to motorists, but that many offenders are now using fraudulent tax and insurance discs and that it is public who pay the price when these people make mistakes.
Further down the brick-walled Tallaght yard, an array of perfectly respectable family saloons, camper vans, mopeds, and any number of old bangers wait in line, all victims of their owners’ failings, and all in a race against time to avoid the crusher.
Among the 200-odd vehicles currently awaiting their fate is a 2007 Kilkenny-registered street sweeper.
“It’s a 2006 vehicle with a false 2007 plate,” says Garda Richard O’Leary. “It was possibly a mistake, but it can’t be put back on the road, taxed or insured until an investigation is complete.”
Next to it sits a large Iveco truck, which was impounded earlier that morning for not being taxed and carrying a load seven tonnes in excess of what it was supposed to. As well as Section 41, the yard also plays home to a number of imported vehicles impounded under Section 140 of the Finance Act because their owners failed to pay VRT.
A subdivision of foreign-registered cars, including a sparkling BMW 318G and a Honda Legend with a plush leather interior also wait in limbo, but their owners are likely to have to pay a ransom of thousands, rather than hundreds, to have them released.
About 20 yards away sits a blue 2000 Nissan Delivery van, which was last taxed in July 2007.
On the front seat sits a brand new Ralph Lauren polo shirt with tags still intact, a shining wristwatch, a card for a Radisson Hotel gym, builders hats, newspapers and a toothbrush.
“The owner of that one went out of business,” says Garda O’Leary.
“A lot of people can’t afford to tax or insure the vehicles anymore, so they are just surrendered to us . . . Once it gets to three weeks it’s very unlikely anyone will come back for it.”
