Shane Ross (Dublin Rathdown, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I want to answer the driving test question first, which is important. This comes up regularly, and Senator Boyhan made a fair point on it. The driver testing service has seen almost a 10% increase in the levels of driving test applications over the last three years. This, coupled with the retirement of staff, has meant that the waiting times for customers at test centres have increased. Driving tests are delivered across 52 test centres nationally. The objective of the Road Safety Authority is to have a national average waiting time of no longer than ten weeks. The current overall national waiting time for a driving test is 13 weeks. The RSA has added ten extra driver testers who commenced duties in October 2016. A further seven driver testers are about to join the service, and these will complete their training in April 2017. While this will bring our driver tester numbers up to a full-time equivalent of 108.64 , the RSA will continue to monitor capacity against demand. The RSA continues to deploy driver testers to best meet the demand across all test centres. I have a table which I can give to Senator Boyhan if he wants to see it.

The industrial dispute in Bus Éireann was addressed by several Senators. I welcome the fact that the parties are going to the Workplace Relations Committee but I would like to respond to one or two things mentioned by Senators Boyhan, Mac Lochlainn and others. This is a very difficult dispute, but I do not agree with those who say that wider issues are involved or that I should get involved at this stage in an industrial relations dispute. I do not know how many times I have to respond to this question, but I will respond to it again and again. I will not be intervening in an industrial relations dispute. That is not my job as Minister for transport. I will not be coming in with a chequebook and sorting out the problem in that way. I have no intention of doing that in this dispute or in any other disputes in my Department. That is not something which I regard as appropriate or right. I have said that once this dispute has been settled I am happy to call a forum or to establish a platform where I will meet and talk as a stakeholder and shareholder with other stakeholders, by which I mean management, the unions and the NTA, to thrash out those particular policy issues they are speaking about.