Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

The Road Safety Authority is a statutory public body established pursuant to the Road Safety Authority Act 2006. The authority’s core mission is to save lives and prevent injuries by helping to reduce the number and severity of collisions on Irish roads. The authority has four core lines of business which are the issuing of driving licences and learner driver permits; driver knowledge and competence testing; vehicle testing of passenger and commercial vehicles; and influencing the behaviour of road users through road safety advertising campaigns, promotion, education, awareness-raising and research.

The 2022 financial statements indicate the authority had income of just over €100 million in the year. This was up from €87.8 million in 2021 and represented the authority’s recovery to pre-Covid income levels. Almost all of the authority’s income is generated from fees and charges in respect of the services it provides. In 2022, this included €34.5 million of driver licence fee income and €16.9 million of driver testing fee income. On the vehicle testing side, the authority raised €16.4 million from the testing of commercial vehicles and €25.9 million from national car test, NCT, operations. It should be noted that the NCT is outsourced to a private sector operator, which had a gross turnover of €72.3 million in the year. The authority’s NCT levy income of just under €26 million from the operator in 2022 was down from €27.5 million in 2021 due to a lower number of tests completed and absorption by the authority of a cost indexation impact. The Road Safety Authority received funding of just under €1 million from the Vote for transport in 2022.

The Road Safety Authority incurred expenditure of €95 million in 2022, resulting in a surplus of €5.1 million for the year. The 2021 financial statements received a clear audit opinion. Without qualifying that opinion, I drew attention to non-compliant procurement to the value of €1.75 million in the year.

Members may wish to note that the 2022 financial statements were certified on 26 June 2023. The authority’s financial statements for 2023 have just been certified by me, and will be presented to the Oireachtas Library in due course. Separately, my office is currently undertaking an examination of the driver testing service. This was designed as an update of a previous special report published by my office in 2009 focused on the economy, timeliness and consistency of the testing service. I expect to report on that work in a further special report in due course