Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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148. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport to provide a breakdown of the number of applicants and waiting times for each category of professional driving licence at each test centre, in tabular form; and the actions he is taking to reduce waiting times. [28683/24]

James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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Under the Road Safety Authority Act 2006, the Road Safety Authority (RSA) has statutory responsibility for the National Driver Testing Service and the specific information requested is held by that agency. I have therefore referred the question to the RSA for direct reply. I would ask the Deputy to contact my office if a response is not received within 10 days.

The driver testing service is currently facing unprecedented demand, with the number of applications for tests rising by 23% year-on-year. Progress in reducing wait times has been achieved primarily through the sanctioning of 75 additional driver tester posts by my Department last March. The RSA currently has sanction to employ up to 205 driver testers in total, which is more than double the 100 sanctioned posts in June 2022.

With the introduction of additional testing capacity from September last year, the average wait time for a test fell from 30.4 weeks at the end of August to 14.9 weeks at the end of April. The RSA is targeting a restoration of the 10-week service level agreement by the end of August.

To further assist with reducing waiting times, in October last year a change was made to the booking system to allow any unused test slots to be made available for candidates to take up at short notice. If a driving test is cancelled at short notice, the RSA now make this appointment available to the general public on the MyRoadSafety portal.

The Authority has recently started to publish detailed monthly information on the driver testing service on the CSO website, including the breakdown of waiting times and distribution of testers and testing capacity by test centre.