Liam Quaide (Cork East, Social Democrats)
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237. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport if he will provide a copy of the plan to restore waiting times for driving tests to ten weeks that was requested by his officials as condition of his Department sanctioning 70 permanent positions for driver testers for the RSA in September 2024; the date by which his Department has requested waiting times to be restored to ten weeks; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [13239/25]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal East, 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 restoring the service to its service level agreement target wait time of 10 weeks and developing the plan for doing so, which, as the Deputy notes, was a condition of the September 2024 staffing sanction.

I am informed that the first tranche of new testers have started their training this month. As additional testers progressively enter the system and increase testing capacity, I expect that we will begin to see progress on reducing waiting times in the months ahead.

I will shortly be meeting with the RSA and I expect that they will thereafter publish the detailed plan to return to the target 10 week wait time.