Michael Murphy (Tipperary South, Fine Gael)

I note Mr. Waide's apology. All members encounter this issue in their constituency offices every week.

It is the aspiration of nearly every teenager of 16 or 17 years of age to get his or her hands on a full driving licence. It is so important, as Mr. Waide said in his opening remarks, in terms of employment, caring, education and other areas. It is important that we acknowledge the work of driver testers and their extraordinary efforts over the past 12 months, in particular, to mitigate waiting times. They have been working in difficult and challenging circumstances. I welcome what Mr. Waide said about aspiring to reduce waiting times to ten weeks by the end of September. I feel strongly that we need to look beyond that and see how we can get the waiting times down to six or even four weeks. Every teenager or person of whatever age, once he or she has done the 12 compulsory lessons, should be able to get an appointment within four or six weeks. In my own town of Clonmel, there was a 24-week waiting time, although maybe it has dropped marginally. In Tipperary town, the waiting time is approximately 20 or 21 weeks.

I welcome this engagement. I know the RSA has had good engagement with the Minister of State, Deputy Canney, as well. Today is about good, productive, constructive scrutiny of the action plan and the key measures being deployed. With that in mind, I now give the floor to Deputy Michael Collins, who has seven minutes.