Keith Swanick (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

My party colleague, Deputy Eugene Murphy, raised this issue a couple of weeks back as a result of the excessive waiting times faced by those in County Roscommon where there is an almost 17 week waiting time to take a driving test. As he said, many of these people may be waiting for a full licence for employment purposes, or a job application may be hingeing on them having a full licence, while other drivers are paying exorbitant levels of car insurance for provisional licences and they are being left waiting long periods to sit their driving test.

This has not come out of left field.The Minister, Deputy Shane Ross, and his Government colleagues have stood by and watched while the average waiting times for a driving test have gradually crept up to the point where a person could have to wait over five months for a test. It shows once again how this Government is completely out of touch with the basic needs of the citizens. The surge in waiting times has been linked to staff shortages. The public sector recruitment ban as well as increased demand as the economy picks up were factors that could have been foreseen and there is no reason for inaction. One only needs to look around on the way to work to know there are more cars on the road. In 2016 the number of private cars on the road crossed the 2 million mark, and there were 240,000 learners licences were issued. When this issue was raised almost nine months ago, in February 2017, the Seanad was told that additional resources and staff would be put in place to reduce waiting times. It is baffling that the Government has still not hired the additional staff needed to reach this demand. Instead the Department is proud that it has put in place certain overtime arrangements and notification systems for learner drivers to increase the numbers of tests being administered. This is very basic and should have been put in place months ago. There is no joined up thinking in the Department nor is there evidence of any future planning. When will this Government realise that things do not need to reach crisis point before it acts? The situation needs to be prevented from deteriorating further. I call on it to expedite the appointment of additional driving testers to increase the numbers.