Stephen Rooney and Alan Richardson sentenced for NCT forgery

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

Stephen Rooney and Alan Richardson each received three years with two-and-a-half years suspended at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court. Judge Gerard Griffin suspended Vincent Brunton's entire three-year sentence, describing him as being on the bottom rung of the scam. The proceedings were reported on 6 March 2017.

Rooney pleaded guilty to forgery of an NCT certificate and corruption involving accepting or obtaining €100 as an inducement or reward for securing a certificate. Richardson pleaded guilty to the same forgery charge and corruption involving accepting cash from Stephen Rooney as an inducement or reward for an NCT certificate. Brunton pleaded guilty to forgery by making a false NCT certificate. Rooney's corruption charge and Brunton's forgery charge concerned 20 April 2011.

Darren Meehan pleaded guilty to producing a false NCT certificate. The report said he had received a two-and-a-half-year suspended sentence the previous month.

The scam was exposed by RTÉ's Prime Time in 2011. The court heard that Rooney asked Richardson, an NCT inspector, to pass two Toyota Carinas which had previously failed tests. Richardson asked Brunton to pass one; Meehan was approached to pass the other. Rooney and Richardson were to share €100, but no money was exchanged.

It was accepted that Rooney, Richardson and Brunton fully co-operated with the garda investigation and were genuinely remorseful. Richardson and Brunton had no previous convictions; Rooney had minor convictions dating back to 2000.

Judge Griffin said the cars were unsafe and the conduct breached public trust in road-safety testing. Detective Garda Sean O' Riordan said the State's evidence was that the faults were not significant safety issues. He accepted that the assessment of faults as a performance issue in Meehan's case could also apply to the second car. He said the cars had been destroyed before the State could establish the level of danger they posed. Judge Griffin was not entirely satisfied with that assessment after reading the engineers' reports.