The responsibility for motor vehicles type approvals directives lies with the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, and its Agency, the Road Safety Authority.
The NSAI operates as the approval authority for related directives, 2007/46/EC (Under the European Communities (Road Vehicles: Entry into Service) Regulations (S.I 157 of 2009) made by the then Minister for Transport, which requires that all member states have national approval schemes implemented from April 2009 through to October 2014.
The Automotive Approvals process relies heavily on technically competent assessors to process the applications. Applications for certification are processed on a first come, first served basis.
There are currently 96 applications within the approval process.
In response to the increasing workload NSAI tendered for an Alternative Service Delivery model in early 2014, to be delivered by competent outsourced technical assessors working directly with NSAI staff. The ensuing contract commenced in January 2015.
Due to the regulatory and technical nature of the assessment process, it is not possible to rapidly increase processing capacity as the sourcing and induction of engineers takes a period of approximately 6 months before they become competent in the approvals process.
The optimum lead in time to process an application to certification, based on full information being provided by the applicant is 10 days. Currently the process time is taking 16 days.
NSAI are projecting that the backlog will reduce over the next 4-6 weeks with the target lead times of 10 days being achieved by the end of Q2.
