Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)

I welcome the opportunity to speak. As has already been pointed out, the consequences of the debacle are that younger people and those without a full licence are paying huge insurance costs. On top of that, it is limiting people from taking the opportunities that are there for work and education, and it is also contributing to isolation. Having said that, I reiterate what Deputy Murphy said about the need for integrated public transport.

I welcome the Minister's speech and that he is taking a hands-on approach, but I find it difficult to understand how this happened. I know we have had an independent review of the Road Safety Authority and that there will be changes. However, it seems to me that the Road Safety Authority had been shouting for some time that it did not have enough staff. The Minister in his speech took pride in the fact that we have sanction for temporary driving testers on a two-year contract and we now have sanction for 200 permanent driving testers. I have no idea how this could not have happened in a proactive manner given the service level agreements between the Government and this entity. What happened? What was the fault with the service level agreement? What were the penalties if the targets were not reached? It is not that I am big into penalties; I am more into doing it correctly and learning from our mistakes.

How did this happen? If the Road Safety Authority back in March pointed out that it needed extra driving testers and the Government responded by sanctioning two-year contracts, how was it not seen then that this service was in trouble? Why did it not look at the service level agreement and what was necessary, given the backlog and the increase in the number of people? People are waiting nine or ten months for a driving test, with awful consequences, and there are also about 8,000 who are not showing up. I realise that certain changes have been made for the good, and that people can get a test if somebody cancels at short notice and so on. However, this is a public service that should operate in a very positive way. It should be the good side of the public service, where trained people are given tests to enable them to be more independent. Instead, we are talking about a debacle.

On the point raised by my colleague from Galway West regarding the moving of the driving centre to Knocknacarra from Westside, I ask for an assurance that it will go back to Westside as soon as possible.

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