Mr. Brendan Walsh:

I want to be clear that the seriousness of this situation is not lost on me because, unfortunately, I have seen a degradation in the lead time since I joined the authority a year ago. That is driven by the factors both we and the Deputy has also outlined. We had 100 permanent staff operating within the authority at the end of August last year. We now have 130 permanent staff. We also have the approval, through the Department of Transport and the Minister of State, Deputy Chambers, to have a sanction for up to 75 temporary testers. That sanction was granted to us on 29 March. Immediately after that we entered into a competition to recruit and train those individuals.

The first 14 individuals took up testing two days ago. By the end of November, we will have 170 testers. Additional offers are still out with people on the panel. If all these people were to accept, it would mean that we would have around 186. This represents an 86% increase above where we were from a permanent perspective so we are going to get there. It is not good enough that the service is at its current level but it takes time. We have engaged successfully with the Department of Transport, which has been very supportive of us. We now have what we believe is the required number of people to get this service back on track by the middle of next year.

We have taken this very seriously. It is top of my current agenda because the reality is that while the NCT is still not achieving the SLAs we are required to achieve, the improvement is there and the plan will deliver improvement in that service by the end of the year. Whether it is driver testing or my administration team, I assure the Deputy that getting this fixed is the only show in town for me at the moment and we will have it fixed by the middle of next year.