Mechanic refused to fix error after wrongly adding 40,000km to motorist's NCT cert, Ombudsman reveals

However, the NCT mechanic refused to change the accidental reading on her service certificate, saying she should have spotted it before leaving the centre.

The case is among a record 4,791 complaints brought to the Ombudsman Ger Deering’s office last year .

In his ruling, the Ombudsman noted “a number of Covid-related restrictions in place at the time” for NCTs, “including encouraging car owners to leave the NCT centre as soon as possible after the test”.

This meant the female motorist may not have seen notices indicating the NCT’s policy. After the Ombudsman intervened, the NCT apologised and issued a revised NCT certificate with the correct reading.

The 19pc rise in complaints last year was strongly driven by 835 grievances about delays in processing passports.The highest number of cases involved Government departments and State offices, followed by local authorities, health and social care services and regulatory bodies.

The report is also highly critical of the “shameful” level of Government support to help people with disabilities access personal transport.

In another case, Cork City Council deleted 12 years from a Traveller couple’s waiting time on the social housing list. They believed they were on the list for 21 years but it was reduced to nine due to a delay in replying to a request for a statutory review.

This led to their applications being closed. It was “unreasonable”, the Ombudsman ruled.

The report also highlights the case of a man who was overpaid €32,000 in his invalidity pension which the Department of Social Protection started to recoup.

However, it emerged his file could not be found. The Ombudsman said if the department cannot locate a file, then there is unlikely to be anything to support a decision to recover the overpayment

The department agreed to refund the amount he had already repaid. It also confirmed that it would write off the overpayment.

A further case involved a woman who said solicitors from her brother’s nursing home sought payment of €32,000 in fees for a seven-month period between his admission and approval for Fair Deal funding.

There was no contract in place for the seven-month period, and thefamily said they were told by the home that the fees would be covered by HSE “emergency funding”.

The Ombudsman said there is a statutory obligation on nursing homes to put in place a contract for residents, and there was no evidence on file to suggest that fees were discussed for the period when the family was awaiting funding approval.

A woman with a disability who was relying on food banks, who applied for a Housing Assistance Payment top-up with Wexford County Council, was turned down because the amount she was paying in rent fell short of a 30pc threshold.

She was granted the increase and back payments.