Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

The RSA stated a few days ago that it would publish a guarantee that all second provisional licence holders would be given a test by 30 June but since then there has been no word or publication to that effect. I note that the Minister is shifting responsibility carefully, once again, on to the Road Safety Authority.

Yesterday, the Minister provided an additional €11 million in the budget, but the Budget Statement states, in the section on transport, that the target date of ten weeks will be achieved at the end of 2008. Therefore, there is a discrepancy between what the Minister told the House in his speech on the Financial Resolution a few minutes ago and what he told the House in response to this question.

Given the considerable public interest in this and that he is Minister for Transport, I do not see why he cannot give details of facts and figures on the numbers of testers and tests. Is it not still the case that around the country there is a significant backlog of waiting times for tests? For example, I note that in Athlone, Skibbereen and Raheny in my constituency, the waiting time is still 28 weeks. In Clifden, County Galway, people face an astonishing wait of 39 weeks for a test. In Wicklow town, the waiting time is 29 weeks. Is this not astonishing, five weeks after the Minister's incredible faux pas at the Hallowe'en break?

On the testing that has been carried out, there seems be an incredible discrepancy between the percentage of applicants passed by testers of the Road Safety Authority and by testers of the contractor company, SGS. I understand SGS, for example, has an average pass rate of 62%, which ranges from 58% in Drogheda to 64% in Naas, 78% in Charleville and 81% and 84%, respectively, in Nenagh and Cahir, whereas the pass rate in the RSA centre in Carlow, for example, is only 42%. The Minister will be aware that the Comptroller and Auditor General drew attention to the regional discrepancy in testing a couple of years ago. Does this concern the Minister?

Mr. Bobby Dunphy, from the Leas-Cheann Comhairle's constituency, contacted the media last week about concerns relating to the standard of testing. Given that the number waiting for a test shot up to 158,000 and the number of provisional licence holders is approaching 500,000, can the Minister guarantee that everybody on a second or subsequent provisional driving licence who wants to do a test will have been tested by 30 June because that is the matter for which this House will hold him responsible?

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