Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South West, Fianna Fail)
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209. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport the status of online driver theory tests; if more spaces can be made immediately available to help clear the growing backlog; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [33476/21]

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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The RSA has been working to deliver an online theory test service, with a pilot online test already underway for trucks and buses. This pilot service has now been extended to include a limited number of car and motorbike tests.

The new offering will see 4,000 online theory tests available for all categories of vehicles during June. The RSA has plans to increase this by a further 6,000 during July. Tests are available on a first-come-first-served basis with the new online service becoming more widely available later in the year.

It is important to emphasise the limits of online testing. These may be convenient for test candidates, but they have to be monitored closely by a supervisor, which makes them more staff-intensive than tests in test centres. In consequence, if the RSA and Prometric, the test operator, get approval in future to extend capacity in test centres to 50,000 tests, they have indicated that they will prioritize staff for the test centres and may have to reduce the figure online from 10,000. This will in fact have a positive impact on numbers tested, as the test centres are far more efficient.