Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent)
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230.To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport if he is aware of the extremely long waiting times for a driving test in Donegal town despite assurances that the situation would improve (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [32269/24]

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. This includes all application and scheduling matters. Neither I nor my department have the power to intervene in individual cases. As such, I have referred the Deputy's question to the RSA for direct, detailed reply in relation to testing wait times in Donegal.

To 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 Deputy may also wish to note that the RSA has started to publish detailed monthly information on the driver testing service on the CSO website, including the breakdown of waiting times and distribution of testing capacity by test centre. This information is available at the following link: data.cso.ie/product/RSADTS