Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to respond to the Minister's contribution. Before I took up this brief, the significant waiting lists for driver testing defied explanation. I still wonder in this economy of limitless resources and capabilities and technological prowess why the Government cannot organise something as fundamental and simple as a driving test. I acknowledge the problem did not arise during the tenure of this Government. I vaguely recall an amnesty introduced by a former colleague of mine 30 years ago. However, this problem was foreseeable and there has been no excuse in recent years for the waiting lists given that it was recognised that the problem would get worse. Our GDP has increased and car sales since the mid-1990s have increased. Our demographics should have acted as an early warning system to highlight the demand for driving tests and to acknowledge that waiting lists would expand unless something was done to ease the problem.

One can hold a driving licence at 17 years. The State, therefore, has 17 years notice that people will require driving licences. The demographics should give the Government the opportunity to organise this simple process, given that it does not involve rocket science. Resources have never been a problem. While driver testing is not entirely self-financing, a few adjustments could make it self-financing. It is difficult to work out what has been the problem.

I welcome the introduction of the legislation because that, in itself, acknowledges there is a problem but, unfortunately, it does not contain proposals to resolve it. Responsibility will be given to a new body to address the issues but that is as far as it goes. The legislation implicitly acknowledges that what went before failed and that a single focused agency whose primary function is to deliver a driver testing system and issue certificates of competency could potentially do a better job.

I am a little sceptical because this will be the third home of the driver testing system in as many years. It languished for years in the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government before being hived off to the Department of Transport where it was expected to get more attention. The system has only been under the Department's aegis for two years but it is being reborn under a new arm's length agency. I cannot help feeling that, similar to the health service, new structures are assumed to equate with reform.

I broadly subscribe to the Bill's objectives, which are to deliver a driver testing system and to promote and develop an improvement in driving standards, which is urgently required. Nobody will deny driving standards in Ireland are absolutely woeful. However, I am perplexed and sceptical because the legislation does not outline how an improvement will be made. The new body's brief is vague and open-ended and I do not know how it will do better than what went before. How will waiting times and the numbers of untested drivers be reduced?

Approximately, 117,000 applicants are waiting for a driving test while 367,000 people are driving with a provisional licence. How will that be addressed so that these drivers can take a test and be issued with a certificate of competency? It is an absolute outrage that 367,000, a significant proportion of the population, are driving without a qualification, some illegally.

The Minister stated there was no evidence to suggest drivers who had failed the test were less competent than fully licensed drivers. Perhaps he is correct because such evidence is not even collected. We do not know when road accidents and fatalities occur whether the victims were driving with provisional licences or had done the test and failed it. Such information is not available. However, this gives the completely wrong signal about road safety and it undermines everybody's respect for the law.

Every day in the House we pass legislation designed to further control, limit and manipulate behaviour and we intrude into ever more obscure areas of human activity through various fines, rules, regulations and penalties to regulate behaviour. However, while regulation of driving behaviour is the norm worldwide, the Government has made it impossible for people to comply with the law. When they do a test and fail, they may continue to drive indefinitely. That sends the wrong signal to the population.

How will the legislation change this? Will a change in structure be confused with a change in the system? Structural change was undertaken by health boards and local authorities, but it is never a solution on its own and it hides the lack of solutions. For instance, the establishment of a traffic corps was announced with great fanfare prior to Christmas. The people in the corps are doing the same work they always did and nothing has changed. No budget, strategy or plan has been put in place.

This is a large Bill, given that its aspirations are extremely modest, as it comprises 37 sections. It provides for all eventualities. The new authority can be given a wide range of additional functions by the Minister. It is enabled by powers conferred on it to engage in a wide range of activities in pursuit of its specific and general objectives, according to the explanatory memorandum. The authority's remit is potentially so wide and vague that nobody involved in the drafting of the legislation had the slightest idea how it will undertake its duties and effect an improvement. The authority is an all-singing, all-dancing body empowered to do virtually everything. It can buy and hive off resources, borrow, outsource and set up subsidiaries. While these powers are worthy, they reflect a lack of understanding of what the authority should do. The range of possible solutions often masks the absence of a solution.

The appalling waiting lists, which have been in existence for years, are a national joke. The authority's first task should be to address the backlog of applicants for driving tests and then introduce a system to prevent the recurrence of backlogs. Perhaps it is a simplistic approach but that can only happen if more testers are appointed. Will more testers be recruited? How will their appointments be funded, given that no allocation was provided for the authority in the budget? How will the individuals be trained and tested? What qualifications will they require?

One of the new authority's tasks is to agree service agreements and standards of performance with the Minister. What benchmark will be used? According to the Minister's reply to a recent parliamentary question, the number of driver testers has remained the same since 2001, at approximately 120. However, the number on contract has increased. Is it significant in light of the Minister's intentions for the new authority that testing itself should be outsourced? It is hard to see how they might do a worse job than currently. I would like to know about that. I have raised concerns about the privatisation of aspects of the justice area. When something is connected with enforcing the law, one needs specific safeguards before one allows it to be privatised. It is among the matters to which I seek responses before this Bill is passed into law. Those are the kinds of fundamental questions that we need answered.

It is simply not acceptable to force onto long and expensive waiting lists people who want to sit a test. I saw a figure that the profits of insurance companies were up by approximately €4 million to €5 million annually as a result of charging people who had not got a full driving licence because they awaited a test. No one expects people to be able to ring up and get a test tomorrow, but there must be a reasonable timeframe and a guarantee that, once one has applied for a test, one will be given one within a given period, be it a week, ten days or even a month. In some cases it is over a year and it has been even longer. That is unacceptable.

Quite apart from people waiting, what I also find unacceptable and a glaring omission is the absence of a penalty for failing one's test. If the purpose of testing is to establish that a person is a competent driver and someone persistently fails, it is a reasonable conclusion that he or she is not competent. After all, the certificate one receives when one fails says that one is not competent and has not passed. If one passes, one receives a competency test certificate, and if one fails, an incompetency certificate. Despite this, we let those who have failed their test straight out onto the roads again with no penalty. We let them in charge of a potentially lethal weapon.

Why are they allowed out again? Why are there no consequences other than perhaps slightly higher insurance premia? Even those are reduced over the years if one does not have an accident. There is no incentive even to try to pass the test. I realise it is not like that for the majority of people who want to pass their tests quickly and get on with their lives. However, some people do not give a hoot, and why should they? That must change. At the very least, there should be an obligation to take lessons from validly qualified and recognised instructors. That is another story that needs to be regulated and examined, and I will return to it.

The number of tests that people may sit should be regulated. I am not saying that people should not be allowed sit their driving test three times, but to go on doing so and make a lifetime's work of it is utterly ridiculous. They should be limited in where and how they can drive. They should not be allowed on motorways or to drive faster than 30 mph. After a certain number of failures, there is no doubt that the fee should be increased. Why should we continue to allow such people create backlogs and clog up the list? There must be some cut-off point. That may seem harsh, and I accept that, but this is about road safety and they are putting other people's lives at risk. There are others to consider. If one has consistently proven oneself to be incompetent, it is reasonable to say at some point that enough is enough and that one may not drive on the road.

I know a small group of people exists who cannot sit tests because they apparently get very nervous about sitting exams and so on. Perhaps an alternative test might be devised for them. I am sure it is not beyond human ingenuity to devise such a test for someone who genuinely says that he or she gets very nervous. I am sure that such cases are particularly obvious to testers. However, that does not detract from the principle that there must be a penalty. If one fails consistently, one should eventually be put off the road. Otherwise, the purpose of the test is negated and it makes no sense to have one.

I also heard the Minister say that the backlog of driving tests was partly due to people not bothering to turn up. That is related. Why would one bother turning up? Why would one bother cancelling? There is no real incentive or penalty. What is another year on the driving testing list and the provisional licence? If the State does not respect the requirement that one have a driving licence, why should the public? The unacceptable consequence of this rule is that, to add to the problem, a person must resit the test each year after the first two-year provisional licence. The perpetual failures constantly add to the numbers who fail each year. I understand that, incredibly, there are 1,300 each week, accounting for almost 50% of all tests. I do not know if many of them are repeat tests since that figure is not available. However, if there is a failure rate of almost47%, something is seriously wrong with the test.

As I say, I do not know how many are habitual failures adding to the backlog, but large numbers are added to it each week. They will stay in the system as long as they are allowed and there are no consequences for them, although there should be. The system must be graduated since one should not bring down the guillotine straight away. However, they must know that, ultimately, if they do not perform, they will be put off the road.

It is self-evident that we must have more testers. Equally important is the quality of the training and education of people on the road. We have introduced the theory test, and my Fine Gael colleague, Deputy Naughten, has developed a policy programme on how better training and testing might be introduced, something I recommend to the Minister since a great deal of sound work has gone into that. I do not want to go into the details of it now, but if 50% of applicants fail, either the test or the preparation for it is wrong. Probably it is a combination of the two.

The test itself must be updated and modernised to be more applicable to contemporary driving conditions. In many cases, conditions on the road — certainly, since I did my own test — have changed. There are now road conditions and markings that simply did not exist then. We now have motorways, and I am not even sure that we had roundabouts when I sat my test. I believe that there was one dual carriageway in the country. Those are all new conditions that are not part of the training or testing.

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