James Lawless (Kildare North, 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 and the information requested is held by that agency. As such, I have referred the question to the RSA for direct reply. I would ask the Deputy to contact my office if a response has not been received within ten days.

To address issues of rising demand and wait 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. This brought the current overall number of sanctioned driver testing posts to 205, up from 100 in June 2022.

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. 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 10 weeks as soon as possible.

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. This information is available at the following link: data.cso.ie/product/RSADTS