Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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351. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport the number of applicants currently waiting to sit the bus driving test in County Meath and nationwide; the average waiting time for applicants to be given a bus test date; and the measures being taken to increase the number of bus testers both in Meath and across the country, given the urgent demand for qualified bus drivers to serve the increasing number of school transport routes and replace those that have been cancelled by Bus Éireann recently. [46215/25]

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.