Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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At the end of April, the estimated wait time to be invited to sit a driving test in Cavan was 16 weeks, compared to a national average of 14.9 weeks. While this is still above the service level agreement target of 10 weeks, significant progress has been made since last August, when the estimated wait time was 34 weeks in Cavan and 30.4 weeks nationally. The Deputy may be interested to note that the Road Safety Authority has recently started to publish detailed monthly information on the driver testing service on the CSO website, including the breakdown of waiting times and distribution of testing capacity be test centre.

The driving testing service is currently facing unprecedented demand, with the number of applications for tests rising by 23% year-on-year. Progress in reducing wait times has been achieved in large part through the sanctioning of 75 additional driving tester posts on a temporary basis by my Department last March, with the first additional testers entering active service last September. The RSA currently has sanction to employ up to 205 driver testers in total, which is more than double the 100 sanctioned posts in June 2022.

To further assist with reducing waiting times, in October last year a change was made to the booking system to allow any unused test slots to be made available for candidates to take up at short notice. If a driving test is cancelled at short notice, the RSA now make this appointment available to the general public on the MyRoadSafety portal. Following this change, test slot utilisation rates have risen from around 95% to 98%, delivering further testing capacity to the system.

I recognise the challenges that excessive driving test wait times are imposing on people throughout the country, including in Cavan, and I welcome the Road Safety Authority's commitment to restoring average wait times to the target, 10-week level in the summer. My officials are in regular engagement with the RSA to monitor progress towards this goal.