Car tax and emissions (2)

Finance Minister Tonio Fenech must make the new car registration regulations known as soon as possible before people start losing their jobs.

I am sure that few people buy a car on the spur of the moment and no importer carries enough stock to satisfy the various colour and specification possibilities, hence it is quite normal for a car to be put on order and for it to take about three months to be delivered. This means that if the regulations were to be made today the actual application would be in three months' time or later.

If the situation regarding the local car type, quantity and use is bad it's the result of the present registration system.

The fact that a large number of people buy four to five year-old cars imported from abroad means that our standard of living is being pushed back four to five years because of the present fiscal measures (Remember once we had a government which bought second-hand telephone systems, cars and trucks).

Is the minister considering a CO2/Km emissions system such as the one that exists in the UK? I hope that registration tax on the lower-emission cars will be zero and the other rates low so that we may finally stop feeling cheated every time we see how much fellow Europeans pay for their cars. May I suggest that for the enthusiast, special number plates could be introduced limiting the car's use to, say, just the weekends. This would limit the amount of not-so-green cars in use.