Paudge Connolly (Cavan-Monaghan, Independent)

As the title indicates, the Driver Testing and Standards Authority Bill 2004 is largely concerned with the establishment of a new agency to provide for efficient driving tests. The setting up of the agency is an admission of the inadequacy of the existing system which has resulted in a ten month waiting list for driving tests. The wide variations in the standards required to pass the driving test in the various centres nationwide provide another sound reason for the setting up of the new authority.

The reality is that there are 130,000 people on the waiting list. Provisional drivers have no incentive to take the test and it is easier to pass it in some areas than in others. As people are aware of the percentage of first-time drivers who pass the test in certain centre, they reapply and take the test in those centres which may be located in a different part of the country. In some areas drivers can get through the test quite easily.

The latest statistics available indicate that 355 people were killed on our roads in 2003. This is the equivalent of three medium-range jets crashing each year. This statistic may not do anything positive for those who have a fear of flying but we are always told it is much safer to be in the air than on the road. However, for a person with a fear of flying, that is of little consolation.

The responsibility of driving a car should not be taken lightly. The new testing authority will be responsible for ensuring the highest standards of driving competency will prevail when drivers receive their full licences. When a person passes the driving test and receives a full licence, he or she has proved their competency and capacity to drive a car safely. Thus, he or she is conferred with the right to drive a car.

How many are still waiting to prove their capacity to drive a car? In other words, how many provisional licence holders are still driving freely on our roads? The figure has been conservatively estimated at approximately 250,000. This means a very significant number of unqualified motorists are driving. Who can say they pose no danger to other road users?

There was a time when one could go into the motor taxation office and purchase a driving licence for oneself — or for the dog or cat, if one so wished — without the necessity of taking a driving test. This situation continued until the introduction of the driving test in the mid-1960s. If such a large proportion of unlicensed drivers is to remain an unpalatable fact of life, we may as well have no driving test.

I am pleased the Bill will make provision for the registration of driving instructors which should ensure a high standard of driving instruction. This is an area in which some improvements have been made in recent years. The instructor registration provision should improve driver safety on our roads.

A high percentage of those who take the driving test fail and must wait for almost a year before taking it again. This process can be repeated for up to five years. In the meantime people can continue to drive on a provisional licence.

We have been told frequently that the number of applications for driving tests is increasing, hence the ongoing lengthening of the driving test waiting list and the inability of the system to cope. Despite increases in the number of testers, the waiting list continues to grow to the point where a ten month wait is considered almost normal. Such a situation endured for so long is unacceptable and an indication of the system's abject failure.

Driving test applicants in Cavan and Monaghan are faced with an unacceptable eight month waiting period before completing their test. This compares most unfavourably with a mere four week waiting period across the Border in County Armagh. Incidentally, the longest waiting period in Northern Ireland is in the region of 12 weeks.

Having raised the issue on several occasions in the House, I was informed that additional testers would be recruited from the United Kingdom. I was also informed that retired personnel would be used to ease the backlog but this has not happened. The suggested bonus incentive for testers was not introduced either. This has resulted in the plight of the long suffering provisional licence holder being further compounded.

This situation has a negative impact on young working people in rural Ireland who have no alternative means of getting to work because they are faced with an inadequate public transport system. The position outside of the cities is that people have no way of getting to work; there is no public transport system that people can hop on or off, like the DART or Luas. I think it was Maggie Thatcher who spoke about hopping on a bike and getting to work but that is not practical. In many cases, people have to drive upwards of ten or 15 miles to get to work. The private car is their only available means of doing so.

For young people, passing a driving test is the difference between receiving an exorbitant insurance quote — or sometimes no quote at all — and a significant reduction in their motor insurance premium. The test is linked to the insurance business. Young males face a particular difficulty when they telephone insurance companies. If they fit a particular profile, the company does not want to know. In some cases, insurance companies want to put young drivers onto their parents' insurance policy. Alternatively, many young drivers are nominated by their parents which, again, is not the proper way to be insured. In many cases, there is a question mark over whether young drivers are covered without the presence of a qualified driver in the car, despite the fact that they have paid very high premiums. It is a murky area and it is not acceptable that this state of affairs should continue.

The current exemption scheme is a travesty. Driving tests urgently required for work are subject to a haphazard system of cancellations. Applicants frequently receive only 24 hours notice before their driving test. If their employers verify that a licence is needed for the job, they can be accepted onto the exemption scheme. However, they frequently receive 24 hours notice or less before their test. They are also required to apply on company-headed notepaper to be accepted onto the scheme.

Such a lottery system must be replaced by a mechanism to fast-track exempted applicants. The current eight month backlog results in unqualified drivers remaining on our roads for too long in what amounts to an appalling waste of time and money. Fast-tracking the process through the introduction of a mandatory four week qualifying period would improve driver competency and probably reduce the number of road accidents and deaths. In such a scenario road safety would be the big winner with improved standards on our roads.

It is high time the current system was replaced with the new Driver Testing and Standards Authority, similar to the Driver Standards Agency in Great Britain. The Driver and Vehicle Testing Agency, the driver testing agency in Northern Ireland, combines both driver and vehicle testing such as that carried out by NCT here. Driver performance is a major issue in road safety and the most stringent criteria and standards should apply.

Lapsed driving licences should be reissued to drivers who may have omitted to renew them for a variety of reasons; for example, they may have been abroad or moved to a city area. Such drivers, many of whom have a wealth of safe driving experience accumulated over many years, now form part of the unacceptably long backlog. They should not be penalised by having to undergo the driving test again because of a technicality. Reissuing lapsed licences should be undertaken, at least to reduce the waiting list.

I wish the Minister well with the plan to fast-track the driving test process and get the lists down to manageable proportions. I hope it will not be a case of forlorn hopes, as happened so often in the past. I know there will be difficulties with bringing in testers from the United Kingdom, uniformity of testing and implementing bonus schemes but hope these can be ironed out because, as I stated in the House, the more unqualified drivers there are on our roads the less safe our roads will be. Sometimes we wonder about the reason the number of road accidents is high. I do not know if any statistics have been collected regarding the number of unqualified drivers involved in road accidents but it is fair to assume that if they are driving on our roads, they will be less safe.

The current system gives people a considerable amount of time to practise their driving. A driver practising on our roads for upwards of five years is not safe. Having a four week qualifying period between applying for and sitting a driving test would place an onus on learner drivers to take more driving lessons. People are not making adequate use of driving instructors, however well qualified they might be. A four week qualifying period would force learner drivers to become more competent.

The establishment of the new authority may make a significant contribution to reducing the number of deaths on our roads through enhancing the standards of testing and, by extension, driving.

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