Mr. Declan Naughton:

I have been in the driver testing service for a long time, since 2000. My feeling is that for the most part people need certainty around the test day. That is the critical issue. Once they know it will be in eight, ten or 12 weeks, they plan around that. They do their lessons and are ready to go on the day. The critical issue is that they have certainty on when a test date will come up for them. In the coming months, the RSA wants to provide a number of tools on our road safety portal to give people more certainty about when they can expect a driving test so they can plan around that.

On the Chairman's broader question, this is about resources. Once we get to a steady ten weeks and we need, say, 140 testers to maintain the waiting time at ten weeks, if we wanted to bring that down to eight, six or four weeks, we would need greater numbers of driver testers. It is a resource issue and a matter for the Government in how we allocate resources to the driving test as against other services. If, in the conversation with the Department and the Government, they are open to having lower waiting times, we will certainly be open to having the conversation on doing that. We have the capacity internally in the RSA to make that happen.