Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent)
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254. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport the number of new driving testers appointment within the country and per county; to confirm whether these are new testers or whether they have been taken from other testing area's (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44625/25]

Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent)
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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. Neither I nor my officials are involved in the service at an operational level. Given the RSA's responsibility in this matter, I have referred the Deputy's question to the RSA for direct response. Please contact my office if a reply is not received within ten days.

Pending this response, the Deputy will be aware that I have made resolving the longstanding issue of Category B driving test wait times a priority since taking office. However, 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 all testing categories but is not the result of reassignment of testers to Category B testing at the cost of other learners.

In anticipation of a 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 that the combined number of such tests conducted during the summer months have been below the May number for the reasons I have outlined, and I am aware of the difficulties this is causing for industry. I am informed by the RSA that the combined number of tests in these categories have continued to rise in July and August.

As of early September, a total of 195 permanent testers are employed, with offers being issued to an additional five candidates in order to reach full operational capacity. This represents a significant increase from the 151 testers in place at the beginning of the year, a figure which included individuals on fixed-term contracts. Furthermore, as the onboarding process concludes, testing capacity previously allocated to training activities will be reallocated to the delivery of driving tests.