Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin and Deputy Daly for bringing this motion forward, which we are happy to support.

I heard somebody say Tallaght was the worst in terms of the waiting list. I was reported in the middle of last year that Dún Laoghaire was the worst, so we are competing for that accolade. Certainly, waiting times for tests and resits in Dún Laoghaire are shockingly bad. They have not improved, as I took the trouble to look through emails I received in recent years, and what is evident from them is that nothing has improved for quite some time. One constituent wrote to me, and this is an interesting overlap of other failures by the Government, and indeed, by a Minister who has moved from housing to transport. In November 2023, a constituent wrote:

My housemates and I have recently received a no-fault eviction notice. I have had no luck finding alternative arrangements in Dublin, so come December 31st, at the age of 29, I will have to move in with my grandmother in Tipperary and commute to work. I will need to commute to work daily, and for that I will need - from Tipperary to Dún Laoghaire - my full driver's licence rather than a provisional. However, the wait times are abhorrent. I am currently on the waiting list and it is estimated that I will only receive my invitation to book a slot for the test in September of next year.

From November to the following September. is quite incredible. Nothing has changed, however. Another constituent wrote to me earlier this month:

I originally applied for my driving test in June 2024, with the expectation based on official guidance that I would be able to sit the test within ten weeks. However, my waiting time has continuously been pushed back. First, I was informed I would receive an invitation to book my test in October, which then got delayed to January. Now I have been told I must wait until April 28th just to select a date, which likely will be scheduled for late May or early June. If all goes well, it will have been an entire year since I registered - far from the promised ten-week turnaround outlined by the Minister for Transport.

Another constituent who wrote to me on 22 February put it very well and very succinctly:

I am currently on a waiting list of 39+ weeks for my first-time driving test. That is nine months: a full human gestation period.

That is well put. The answer of course, is very basic, which is to recruit enough people to do the testing. I have to wonder, given the fact that the Government has been misleading the public about its recruitment strategy in the health service, telling the public and this House repeatedly that it is trying to recruit people but is finding it difficult to recruit them, and then I discover when talking to health workers that the health service is not trying to recruit them at all because there is a thing called pay in numbers, which means the Government is telling different sections of the health service that they are not allowed recruit people when they need them. I have to wonder whether it is just the same here in something as basic as testing people to drive so that they can get their licence when often their jobs or critical parts of their existence depend on it. It is pretty pathetic and the Government should implement this motion.

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