Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail)
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209. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport if he will review the current situation in which approved driving instructors at RSA test centres have been prevented from entering these centres and have had no access to toilet or sanitary facilities for almost two years; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [63298/21]

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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While operational arrangements at driving test centres are a matter for the Road Safety Authority (RSA), I understand that prior to COVID 19 some test centres did offer toilet facilities. In some cases, indoor waiting rooms were also made available to driving instructors or other accompanying persons while learner drivers underwent their test. 

However, in the interests of current public health requirements, as part of the RSA’s Covid 19 Resumption of Services Protocols, toilet facilities are only made available to the learner driver. Waiting area facilities are not available in any test centre – either for the learner driver or others.  

I am advised that, as well as the need to comply with public health considerations, safely returning to pre-pandemic arrangements at this time, would in effect reduce the number of tests being provided in a situation where the RSA is already working to reduce backlogs built up during the pandemic.

While adherence to the existing protocols has enabled the RSA to continue to deliver driver testing at a time when this public service has been suspended in many other jurisdictions, the RSA looks forward to the day when it can again restore facilities for driving instructors and any person accompanying learner drivers for their test.