Francis Noel Duffy (Dublin South West, Green Party)
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175. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport if he is aware that people are receiving driving test appointment at a test centre (details supplied) after a six month wait; what his Department is doing to shorten these waiting times; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [41243/24]

James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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Under the Road Safety Authority Act 2006, the operation of the National Driver Testing Service is the statutory responsibility of the Road Safety Authority (RSA) this includes all application and scheduling matters.

To address issues of increasing demand and lengthening waiting times for a driving test, in March 2023 the Department of Transport conveyed sanction for the RSA to recruit up to an additional 75 driver testers on a temporary basis.

In line with the conditions set out in the 2023 sanction, the RSA submitted a business case to the Department in June 2024 regarding long-term, permanent staffing needs for the service to cater to current and future demand. The Department conveyed sanction the beginning of September for 70 additional driver testing posts on a permanent basis, bringing the permanent sanction to 200. This is more than double the sanctioned headcount in June 2022, which was 100 testers.

As a condition of sanction for these additional resources, my officials have requested that a plan is put in place to restore waiting times to the service level agreement of 10 weeks as soon as possible.

To further assist with reducing waiting times, last year a change was made to the booking system to allow 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 candidates on the MyRoadSafety (rsa.ie) portal.

The Deputy may 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.