Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Rural Independent Group for bringing this motion to the Chamber. It is something we have spoken about on many occasions in the Committee on Transport and Communications but to have a two-hour debate on it in the Dáil is most welcome. We are in the midst of a huge problem in road safety and many other issues in our roads. Chief among that is the wait list for driving tests. As of May of this year, up to 60,000 learner drivers were facing wait times of up to ten months to do their driving test. In places like Dún Laoghaire there are wait times of 46 weeks, in Finglas there are wait times of seven months, in Killarney there are wait times of six months and in Mallow there are wait times of 24 weeks, which is half a year. For the people who are contacting my office and other offices of Deputies and public representatives, the common issue among most of them is that they need their driving test and licence to be able to get a job.

I know the Minister of State, Deputy Chambers, previously announced that 75 more testers will be brought on stream this October. We have not reached that target but the rate of increase in applications of 36% from 2021 to 2022 would mean that even if we had the maximum number of testers, as announced by the Minister of State, Deputy Chambers, it would not have met the demand. The Minister of State, Deputy Chambers, also said in April of this year that by the end of quarter 1 2024, the waiting time for applicants to sit a test would be down to the RSA target of ten weeks. However, we heard the Minister of State, Deputy Chambers, in his response to the motion this morning saying that this has been pushed out to mid-2024. That is a disconcertingly vague timeline for such an important achievement, which would be to get it back down to ten weeks. Responsibility needs to be taken as to why we are so far away from reaching this much-needed target. Can the Minister of State explain why we have seen the closure of the temporary test centres that were utilised during the pandemic? We all acknowledge that the pandemic was a problem and that it massively impacted driving test waiting lists. However, we are well beyond the pandemic now and we have had driving tests up and running for almost two years, yet the problem is not getting any better.

Does the Minister of State agree with the logic given by an RSA spokesperson in April that the closure of St. Finbarr’s test centre in Cork was due to it being no longer needed? Would the Minister of State agree that this was wrong, that it was needed and that it should have been kept open? Cork is an area facing 24-week wait times in Cork, which is well over the acceptable point for driving test wait times. The lack of delivery from the Government to address these delays is another example of it letting down the younger generations in particular. I mention people who are getting apprenticeships and being offered jobs but being unable to take them. Many people who I grew up with and people younger than me in Dublin, if they have been able to source or buy housing, they have had to do so outside of Dublin in the surrounding counties, where public transport is not as good and where they need to be able to drive to visit relatives and access work, and again they are being let down.

These delays once again highlight the need for a robust transport system and they highlight the fact that we do not have a robust transport system countrywide. For a lot of people in my constituency, which is in Dublin and close to Dublin, they are relying on a bus service. We have no rail service or high capacity service such as MetroLink. There is a need to drive to work, therefore. Many people in north County Dublin work along the M50, in one of the industrial centres off it, and there is no direct bus route to that; they need to get in their cars. We are not protecting workers or ordinary families, therefore, by failing to deliver on public transport. We are forcing people to use cars and when they try to access a car and are able to meet the cost of affording a car, they are unable to get a driving test in an acceptable period.

For people outside of Dublin the situation is compounded and is much worse. A study last year from Social Justice Ireland showed that the massive deficit in public transport in rural Ireland forces people to use their cars at an even higher rate. I want to acknowledge something that Deputy Michael Healy-Rae mentioned yesterday on Leader's Questions. He said it would be ideal if students left school with their leaving certificates in one hand their driving licences in another. That is a good aspiration that we should have. It feels as though we are light years away from that but being able to drive safely and having that as part of your school curriculum in your late teens would be a wonderful advancement and something to aim for in this country. If we can ensure that people are driving early, learning how to drive safely early or getting their tests early, it will help set them up if they are going straight into the workforce or if they are going through college outside of their home towns. That is something we will need to look at but we are, as I said, light years away from that because we have these wait times and we are in the midst of this crisis. The long wait times need to be tackled with a multipronged approach. More testers are welcome but there needs to be more effort made to hire more and bring them on stream quicker.

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