Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Acting Chairman and I appreciate his vindicating my rights. I resent being told I was acting the clown or whatever else.

As I said, for the record I have statistics here that the Minister confirmed of the number of people waiting to be scheduled for driving tests. I have said this is "deeply alarming and a further indication of the disarray that is afflicting the learner driver system". Through the Chair, I beg the Minister that this is where he should focus his intention. He should deal with the alarming figures I am going to quote and allow these people to get their tests. If there is another problem out there that is not broken, he should not fix it. He should fix the problem first. Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. This is deeply disturbing.

The RSA has confirmed to me by parliamentary reply that nationally a total of 44,746 applications are waiting to be scheduled for tests. These are the Minister's Department's figures. They have no idea when they will get a date. This is why I say the Minister should look at and deal with this first. He has been in the job for two years. The people in the RSA have criticised us. This is what they should be dealing with. Then they should deal with other issues systematically and incrementally along the way and try to have us all going in the one direction. These figures go to the heart of what I and others have been saying for some time now, that there is chronic backlog afflicting this sector, which in turn is creating serious knock-on consequences. That is where I am coming from.

That is where the problems are.

Going back to the employment market, we cannot get people. We all know as business people we cannot get people because they cannot get their licences. That would not be tolerated anywhere else. They would be glad to get people back to work and they are needed now more than ever because we do not have people to do the work. The Taoiseach tells us we have full employment. We have negative situations in our county because we cannot get the staff because they cannot get their licences even though they are paying the money on training - I am sorry to be repetitive - to get the lessons and doing their best to get it but they cannot get the test. The figures go to the heart of what I and others have been saying.

It is deeply alarming to me that the figure of 44,746 does not include those who have already been scheduled for an upcoming test. Does the Minister understand? It does not include the large cohort, I imagine, who have already been scheduled for a test and given a test date. I do not have the numbers for that. They have been scheduled for an upcoming test. So the figure of almost 45,000 merely reflects those waiting to be given a test date. There could be another 45,000 or 145,000: I do not know and the Minister will not tell us. Has he asked his departmental officials? Has he asked the RSA? I know there are problems with getting information back and forth between the Garda and the RSA with one of them blaming the other and they cannot get accurate details to answer parliamentary questions which is ridiculous in a democracy. They should be a public service and not self-serving. They should tell the people the facts and not cloak it and mask it, trying to demonise young people.

The RSA advised that part of this is due to the number of driver tester retirements in the past 12 months. However, hey presto, this week, either yesterday or the day before, I heard an RSA spokesperson say that once this law is passed - live horse and you will get grass - it will magically employ, I think, 160 extra testers. I could be wrong on the figure. The reply to the parliamentary question stated that part of it was due to the number of driver tester retirements in the past 12 months. However, it does not specify how many testers have opted out of the system and why. That is a very important question. Have they taken early retirement? Have they just got fed up with the system? Have any of them been dismissed or reprimanded? The Department will not answer that question either. That is very important.

I am putting facts before the Minister. They are the gospel as far as the RSA is concerned. They are the Minister's words in a reply to a parliamentary question, which I have a right to ask. The next thing some Deputies might try to stop rural Deputies having parliamentary questions. They might have covered too much discrimination against rural areas. That is what it is, dogged discrimination against rural areas.

The RSA has also advised that it has taken on 23 new testers since 2016. This comes from the reply to a recent parliamentary question. It could announce this week - dangle the carrot before us - that if we pass this Bill, it will appoint 160 new testers. The reply stated that 23 testers had been recruited, but only six of those were due to have commenced by the end of 2017. What is going on in the RSA and the testing? Based on a parliamentary question submitted in late 2017 it had recruited 23 since 2016 but only six of the 23 will have commenced operating by this year. This is simply not good enough given the scale of the challenge. The Minister will not answer those questions either or ask officials to come in who answer to him.

We are being told the RSA will employ 160 of them - I could be wrong; it could be 140 or 150 of them - if the law is passed. However, under existing legislation and existing massive waiting lists I have told the Minister about - I have requoted his figures back to him - he has told us the RSA has only recruited 23 testers since 2016 but only six of those had commenced operation by this year. What are the other 17 doing? I have no disrespect or animosity towards any of them. They applied for the job. I hope there was a rigorous process and they got the job. Why are they not at work? People are being driven to distraction, and driven into mental illness, unemployment and lack of engagement in our society and we have 17 driver testers, according to the Minister's figures, idle, ina suí gach lá in áit éigin, doing nothing. As they say, the devil finds work for idle hands. Why is that being done to those people? They applied for the job, got the job and they are not being allowed to work and not being put at work.

There is something rotten in the RSA and in the Department with this kind of scandal going on. I suspect they are getting paid. Why should they not be paid if they are hired? However, the Minister is not allowing them to work even though he has all those figures indicating that 44,747 people are awaiting a date for a driving test and that figure does not include those who have scheduled tests.

Why do people in Tipperary have to wait a month to reapply when with 17 testers recruited since 2016, níl aon obair acu? They have a job but they have no work. This is a scandal that the Minister wrote about and railed about for decades in the Sunday Independentwhen he was writing about jobs for the boys, quangos and lack of accountability. That rings fairly hollow now. Does the Minister ever go back and look at some of the articles he wrote? Seventeen testers have been recruited but not allowed to work.

I ask this question again. Is there a trade union issue? I asked that because I had been told in a nod-and-wink way that there was. I do not know whether there is and I will not apportion blame. There is some reason, which is rotten, that 17 people are getting paid with no work in spite of the fact that people are crying out to do their tests, crying out to get into the employment market and crying out to have social interactions and be able to fulfil their lives to some extent. The Minister will not answer that question either. I would like the Minister to write it down that 23 new testers were hired since 2016. Based on the figures I have, quoted by the Minister, only six of them will have commenced operating by this year. That is a scandal when we consider the number of people waiting for tests. John in Tipperary today failed his test and must wait a month before he can even reapply.

The Minister has dangled the carrot in front of us - several carrots have been dangled - that if we pass the Bill, the RSA will recruit 150 of them. When will they be put to work? Will it be in 2040, given that it could only gainfully employ six of the 23 they took on trying to make some dent on the waiting lists? If the Minister is worth a candle at all he should answer those questions before he penalises and discriminates further against the young men and women of rural Ireland and urban Ireland. Most of the problems are in rural areas because people in urban areas have other forms of transport available to them which we do not have in rural Ireland. Ba chóir don Aire an cheist sin a fhreagairt. Before we go another minute he should be answering, but he has not answered any questions.

With all the amendments all the way along questions have been put to the Minister by several Deputies, not only from our side of the House, but also from the other side of the House, and he has not answered one. He did not answer Deputy O'Keeffe's question. He has not backed up his claim that repeat offenders are causing all the accidents. That is a fine thing to say: it is nice and dandy. It is a nice bit of a quote and will get traction in the media. However, he is demonising innocent people if it is not true. If he does not prove it to be true, it must be false. We are not in a court of law here, but we are in an elected Parliament and we are getting this diatribe and lack of answers and lack of accountability.

In my county, Tipperary, 1,700 people are waiting for driving tests to be scheduled. That does not include John, who did the test today, and the many others who have tests scheduled. These are 1,700 people waiting to be scheduled for driving tests. This demonstrates the enormity of the problem at a local level. Does the Minister understand the 1,700 people? I know he can count. Those 1,700 people are waiting for driving tests to be scheduled in Tiobraid Árann. We can assume that 300 or 400 of those are young drivers who want to get on the road, want to play their part and want to be law abiding. They will be criminalised if the Minister passes this legislation. The objective is to make the roads safer, but this is criminalising young people. It is naked and basic criminalisation and is demonising the people of Tipperary. I will not stand for that.

The Minister came down to Cashel for a photo opportunity last week with his sop for the rural transport.

What about the young people? What about the people who are waiting and who have no choice but to wait? They will not even schedule them for a test. What about those people? It is time the Minister started being accountable. It is time he started putting into action some of the words he wrote Sunday after Sunday. Even during the holidays, when he was in France, he would write articles about how he would run the country and the world if he had a chance at power. He is making a damn bad job of it. He cannot run his Department. He cannot control the RSA. He cannot support the traffic corps or the Garda Síochána with his colleague, the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Flanagan, and allow them to be out policing the roads and the uninsured drivers who are reckless, do not care, do not want a test, have no licence and are out there driving and causing mayhem and destruction. That is where the Minister should focus his energy.

The quiet, ordinary people of rural Ireland are a soft touch. They are the people who will not come up here and march on the Dáil about water charges. They pay their way. They dig their wells and pay their water charges. They pay tax to educate their children and support their communities. There is fundraising every day of the week. There is fundraising when someone is sick or hurt in an accident, such as a young boy in Clogheen who was hurt on a mountain bike recently. I attended a coffee morning last week that raised €4,000 in a small community. That is the generosity of spirit of the people the Minister is trying to blackguard. It is downright naked blackguarding. The Minister is looking up at the sky and anywhere except looking at me in the face to answer the questions I have asked him. He has not answered even one question. I have never seen such contempt for Members of the House by any Minister and I am here almost 11 years thanks to the good people of Tipperary. I might not be here much longer but that is their decision. While I am here I will try to hold the Minister to account because he is not accountable to anyone. Just because he is holding the Government together it cannot do anything with him only throw sops every now and then. The Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Flanagan, went to Stepaside last week to have a look at the Garda station to see if there were many inhabitants in it.

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