Brian Stanley (Laois, Independent)
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447. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport if he will confirm whether new testers in driving test centres have increased as promised since June 2025; if they are on schedule with having enough testers from September on to alleviate the waiting time for tests; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42012/25]

Brian Stanley (Laois, Independent)
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451. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport if he will confirm if the RSA have hired more staff to reduce waiting time for driving tests; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42016/25]

Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 447 and 451 together.

Under the Road Safety Authority Act 2006, the Road Safety Authority (RSA) has statutory responsibility for the National Driver Testing Service. Neither I nor my officials are involved in the service at an operational level.

To support the RSA in meeting demand for the driving tests, last September my Department issued sanction for up to 70 additional driver tester posts, bringing the overall permanent sanction to 200, representing a doubling of the comparable figure in July 2022. Recruitment and deployment under this sanction is progressing, with 30 additional driver testers entering live testing during the month of July. This followed a previous deployment of new testers in April of this year, and the RSA expects that a further 18 testers will enter live testing during August. By the end of August, the RSA expects to have employed up to its full sanction of 200 testers, compared to 151 in employment at the beginning of the year (which included some testers on fixed-term contracts). Moreover, as the onboarding of new recruits winds down, testing capacity which has been tied up delivering training in recent months will again be available to deliver tests.

Reducing driving test wait times has been one of my priorities since taking office and I directed the RSA to produce and publish a service recovery plan to meet the 10-week average national waiting time target by September. The RSA are reporting to me on progress against their plan on a fortnightly basis and also publishing progress updates on their website. The plan and progress can be found at the following link: www.rsa.ie/services/learner-drivers/the-driving-test/test-waiting-times

As of 26 July, the national average wait time for a Category B test was just over 14 weeks, with 10 test centres having a wait time of less than 10 weeks. While still above the target and an unacceptable amount of time to wait for a test, it marks a significant improvement on the 27-week wait reported at the end of April. As further additional capacity comes on-stream in the coming weeks, the RSA continues to project that the 10-week target will be achieved by September.

Brian Stanley (Laois, Independent)
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448. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport he will confirm if driving testers are being moved from articulated truck, bus and truck testing to car testing, to reduce wait times on car driving tests; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42013/25]

Brian Stanley (Laois, Independent)
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449. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport further to Parliamentary Question No. 253 of 12 June 2025, the reply to which stated that all other categories including motorbikes, trucks and buses were continuing to be conducted, if he is aware that there is a backlog in the bus, and HGV testing system; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42014/25]

Brian Stanley (Laois, Independent)
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450. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport if he is aware that there is a backlog in bus and truck testing currently, due to testers been moved to car test centres; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42015/25]

Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein)
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519. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport if he is aware of recent reports that testers are being removed from the commercial testing service in order to reduce wait times elsewhere but that they are rising for commercial tests; to report on any engagements he has had with the RSA about this. [43047/25]

Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 448 to 450, inclusive, and 519 together.

Under the Road Safety Authority Act 2006, the Road Safety Authority (RSA) has statutory responsibility for the National Driver Testing Service.

Although I have made resolving the longstanding issue of Category B driving test wait times a priority since taking office, I am also concerned that measures to improve Category B wait times do not come at the cost of increasing wait times in other categories. With this in mind, when preparing their service recovery plan published in May, I directed the RSA to not pursue any measures that reassigned testing capacity to Category B testing.

However, due to the more advanced nature of the work, there is a high level of overlap between experienced testers who are able to deliver tests outside of Category B and testers who are able to train new recruits. As the RSA has accelerated its recruitment and deployment of driver testers in recent months, this has led to a temporary reduction of testing capacity within other testing categories but is not the result of reassignment of testers to Category B testing at the cost of other learners.

In anticipation of this temporary loss in capacity to deliver non-Category B tests, the RSA assigned additional capacity to such tests during the month of May before commencing its accelerated training and deployment programme. In that month, just over 1,100 Category C and D tests were delivered nationwide. This was the largest number of such tests conducted in a month this year and 24 per cent above the monthly average for the first four months of the year. I do acknowledge, however, that the combined number of such tests conducted in June fell to 534 for the reasons I have outlined, and am aware of the difficulties this is causing for industry.

With the RSA expecting to have fully employed its sanction of 200 permanent driver testers by the end of August, and all testers conducting tests rather than temporarily reassigned to deliver necessary training, rapid progress can be expected across all testing categories towards the service level agreement target.