Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)

The Minister's announcement on Tuesday about reducing waiting lists for driving tests sounded well, but people should not get too excited because his predecessor, the Minister, Deputy Brennan, made a similar announcement in February 2003. Does the Minister accept that there are now longer waiting lists for the driving test and fewer testers? There is fewer than one tester for every 1,000 people on the waiting list.

The Minister announced a package on Tuesday promising to cut the waiting list to a month within the next 18 months. Where does he propose to find the driver testers? Are there qualified driver testers waiting to be employed? How does he propose to train recruits to bring them up to the standard that prevails? How does he propose to ensure that the standards are sufficiently high in the testing undertaken by private sector operators? How will he ensure even standards between public and private sector testers? Surely it would make more sense to set up the driving standards authority and recruit additional staff to that authority.

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