Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Young people are being criminalised by not being in a position to get their test. Their parents put their hands in their pocket. For 12 lessons, they pay up to €50 a lesson. There are excellent driving schools. We did not have that at all when we were young and we passed our tests and got our licences. They cannot get the test after all the cost involved. Then they can fail for the slimmest of issues, if a car is defective in any way during the test. I had a case which I will not repeat because the Leas-Cheann Comhairle will say I mentioned it earlier, but if the same thing happened with a seat adjuster or whatever, the driver fails. There must be a sliding scale. If the person is competent to drive the car, obey the rules of the road and do everything that he or she is expected to do in the test, for example, the three-point turn, and God knows whatever else he or she is expected to do as I have not had to do a test for years, he or she should get the licence with a restriction. If something is defective in the car, it probably was not defective but fell off as a result of the potholes on the way to test centre. That is what has happened, in rural areas or in some streets in urban areas as well. Frustration is something that drivers from rural areas will be used to. They have to be used to it. As I said, they cannot get the tests.

The Road Safety Authority, in its wisdom, and the previous Minister - the Minister, Deputy Ross, who was sitting up here in the back seat a few years ago objecting to most matters - had the NDLS learner driver permits debacle, another sad, sorry spectacle. We have an office in Clonmel about which we fought for nearly two years. The Road Safety Authority procured it. It was a building that was empty on the side of a bypass and no one could find it because the then NRA, now TII, would not allow them put up a finger-post sign for people to find it. There are others in that business estate-----

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