Imelda Munster (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

According to the RSA, in March 2017 the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport instructed that PSCs were to be mandatory in the process of applying for a driver licence or a theory test. Last year, the PSC became mandatory for theory tests. PSCs were to become mandatory for driver tests in April. In March, just one month before the card was to become mandatory for driver licences and nine months after it was made mandatory for theory tests, the Department received legal advice from the Attorney General that there was no legal basis for the change. Therefore, the Minister pulled the plug on the project. This was a year in, after he had instructed the RSA to prioritise it and had overseen the waste of €2 million implementing a policy that turned out to be illegal. Why did the Minister and his Department not check, in the first instance, that there was a legal basis for that change?

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