Ciarán Ahern (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

My thanks to Deputy Daly and Sinn Féin for bringing forward this motion. The Labour Party will be supporting it. I take this opportunity to congratulate the new chair of the RSA, Anne Graham. I wish her well in her role. I hope she is listening.

I am of the belief that we should be doing everything we can to encourage people to use greener, more sustainable modes of transport. This means making sure that transport is available to everyone and that the option to travel by bus or by rail or to cycle is there for them wherever they might be going. The unfortunate reality, though, is that we are not there yet. There is a whole host of reasons people remain reliant on their cars, be it accessibility, connectivity or efficiency. In some parts of the country, public and active travel infrastructure is virtually non-existent. There have been improvements in recent years, which we welcome, but these have come at a fairly slow pace and have still not got us to a place where public transport is a viable option for most people. That needs to change, and Government will need to invest, significantly and continuously, in order that we will have the necessary infrastructure and that everyone across the country will have the option of using public transport or engaging in safe active travel.

We recognise that, for now, private car use remains the preferred and, in some cases, the only option for many people. In that context, we need to get a serious handle on the backlog of driving test applications and the wait times that we are seeing. Ultimately, this is an issue of road safety. Some 174 people died on our roads last year. There has been a worrying increase in the number of road casualties in recent years. The figures have been trending in the wrong direction. I was glad that we had the opportunity a couple of weeks ago to discuss road safety. We need to improve road maintenance across the country, we need more enforcement of the rules of the road and we need to reduce speed limits. Ongoing driver education must also play a part.

What is particularly stark is the number of young people who are dying or being seriously injured in road traffic accidents. People aged 25 or younger represented 35% of the fatalities on our roads last year, the highest proportion among any age group. That is up from around 25% in 2023 and 16% the previous year. Between 2019 and 2023, there were 131 road traffic accidents involving learner drivers in which someone was killed or seriously injured. In 107 of those cases, the learner driver was unaccompanied. I am by no means trying to assign blame here. Obviously, each case will have been different. However, I raise this issue because the longer people are waiting to do their driving test, the more they are tempted to drive illegally without a full licence. The more they try their luck, the more chance there is that they will pick up bad habits that are difficult to unlearn. We simply cannot have people driving unaccompanied on our roads if they have not passed their test, and potentially in some cases, people have not even done the mandatory 12 lessons. This poses a serious risk not just to those drivers themselves but the road users around them as well.

This is not just about having a driving licence for the sake of it. Young people are being pushed further and further away from college campuses because of the lack of affordable housing. Where there is no public transport option available to them, they need to be able to drive to college or else face torturous commutes. The long-term solution has to be better public transport. In the meantime, we have to address the fact that students are dropping out of college because they simply cannot get there and many of them are languishing on a driving test waiting list. We are also seeing people miss out on job opportunities because having a driving licence is a requirement and they cannot get a test in time. We are seeing much-needed apprentices, for example, left high and dry because they cannot get their driving licence, and are forced to either pause or drop out of the apprenticeship altogether.

Many people in my constituency of Dublin South West work in the industrial estates along the M50. There is very little direct public transport access to the latter so they have to rely on private cars to get there. Workers who are waiting for driving tests are being let down and are missing opportunities. That is before considering the additional financial burden being placed on people waiting for their test by way of the increased insurance premiums for learner drivers. Probably most concerning - this issue is referred to in the motion - is the knock-on effect the backlog and waiting times are having on vital individuals and services like paramedics and the haulage and public transport sectors. There is a vicious cycle emerging that is preventing us from encouraging people to use public transport. People are forced to rely on private cars because of inadequate or unreliable bus services, but we cannot improve those services because providers like Dublin Bus or Go-Ahead cannot get the drivers who are potentially waiting for driving licences.

I welcome the comments the Minister made in respect of not opposing the motion. It is quite clear that there has been serious mismanagement by the RSA and the Government with respect to virtually all aspects of our roads, be it in the context of road safety or driving test wait times.

As an aside to the matter this motion deals with, but not unrelated, NCT waiting times are also outrageous and are undoubtedly exacerbated by the delays elsewhere in the system. These need urgent attention as well. Ultimately, it appears that the RSA is unfortunately incapable of fulfilling its aim of a ten-week maximum waiting period for a test. The national average is more than double that. Looking at the data, there is not a single test centre in the country that is meeting the ten-week goal. In my constituency, the Tallaght testing centre is seeing waiting times of 27 weeks. More than 8,300 people are waiting for tests there. That is nowhere near good enough.

The Government has to take its share of responsibility. In April 2023, the then Minister of State at the Department of Transport, Deputy Jack Chambers, said that by the end of quarter 1 of 2024, the waiting times for applicants would be down to ten weeks. The following October, he said it would be mid-2024 before this was achieved. I believe that was during a debate on a motion on this topic brought forward by the Rural Independent Group, some of whom are now members of this Government. Perhaps they will have a word with the Minister or with themselves, because here we are almost two years after the initial promise was made and the massive backlog and wait times persist. The Government simply has not given it the urgency or attention required and the issue is compounding problems elsewhere in the transport system.

As I have said previously, it is welcome that there will be a separation of functions in the RSA arising out of the recent review of that organisation. We need to see an implementation plan that sets out the framework of the new organisation, if there is to be one, particularly with regards to its testing functions and the resources being put behind it in the context of this motion. As the motion states, we need to end the practice of hiring temporary driving test instructors. More broadly, we need to ensure that the new entity is sufficiently resourced both to address the current issues and to ensure that they do not arise again. That does include opening new testing facilities, and I hope the OPW and RSA are working to identify potential sites now. We did have temporary test centres during Covid. It is obvious that they were closed prematurely. I suggest that Government explore the possibility of reopening these sites in the interim in order that the backlog does not worsen while new permanent sites are being identified.

I will conclude by reiterating my support for the motion. It is a constructive motion, and I am glad to see that the Government may be taking it on board. We desperately need to increase the number of driving test instructors, we need to properly resource the RSA or whatever entity follows it, and we need new testing sites to relieve the pressure on existing sites. All of this needs to be done in conjunction with increased, sustained investment into public and active transport so that we are not so reliant on private cars, and that sustainable travel is available and accessible to everyone.

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