Taking the NCT in Cork? Here’s where the best pass rates can be found

By Peter McCarthy, Corkman

Due to take the NCT on your car in County Cork? Then your best chance of getting a pass cert is to book the test for the Little Island centre where over half of cars pass first time, figures from the National Car Testing Service show.

Little Island tops Cork NCT pass rates

Of Cork’s six test centres, Little Island has the best pass rate for a full test with almost 54 per cent of cars there passing the mandatory vehicle inspection test so far in 2025. That’s followed by Blarney, Youghal and Macroom, which are all on 51 per cent .

Which Cork NCT centres have lowest pass rates

Your worst chances of passing in the county are at the Skibbereen and Charleville test centres, both of which, with 47 per cent pass rates, have failed more than half of cars given a full test this year.

How many NCT tests Cork centres carry out

Little Island is also the busiest test centre in Cork with 51,986 full tests carried out in 2025, followed by 33,525 at Blarney. The other four test centres have carried out around 15,000 full tests each.

This year to date a total of 145,251 full tests have been carried out in Cork with just over half (51.31 per cent or 74,526 cars) passing. A total of 59,699 vehicles (41.10 per cent) failed in the major category while an additional 11,026 (7.59 per cent ) were deemed dangerous fails.

A dangerous fail is one where the car has a dangerous defect that poses a direct or immediate risk to road safety and shouldn’t be driven on the roads. The Cork test centres with the highest dangerous fail rates so far this year are Skibbereen (8.48 per cent) and Macroom (8.23 per cent).

NCT retest pass rates in Cork centres

If you fail your NCT the first time in Cork and need to take a lane retest your chances of passing it on the second attempt are 87.5 per cent, with the best odds being in Youghal (88.93 per cent) and Skibbereen (88.42 per cent). After a retest, 342 cars in the county were still deemed dangerous.

In a non-lane retest, which is used for more minor issues that don’t need the use of test equipment, the pass rate in Cork so far this year has been 99.42 per cent.

Adding retests to the number of full tests, the total number of inspections in Cork in 2025 to date has been 214,642 with 137,728 or 64.17 per cent of vehicles getting the green light from testers.