Vow to cut ‘unacceptable' driving test wait times in half in 3 months despite some centres in country without examiners
Executives from the Road Safety Authority were grilled by
1
Wait times will go down to ten weeks by September
Credit: Getty
At the moment, there are 102,000 learner drivers awaiting an appointment to sit their full driving test.
The authority has been ramping up its capabilities to carry out driving tests over recent years with 157,183 tests carried out in 2021 compared to 253,850 last year.
At the start of the year, learners were being forced to wait up to 27 weeks on average to sit their test.
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This wait time has now been slashed to 20 weeks with the RSA promising to cut this wait to 10 weeks by September.
The RSA has rolled out its largest ever recruitment drive to beef up its tester numbers with 1,400 people applying to become testers.
Some 41 new testers have been recruited so far with 32 more currently undergoing training.
The RSA plans to recruit 18 more testers in the coming months to bring their full roster up to 200 testers across the country.
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A number of test centres currently have no testers and will not have any until later this year – including Clifden in
RSA boss Sam Waide apologised to the public for the lengthy wait times for tests which he admitted were 'unacceptable.'
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He said: 'I want to acknowledge that, and to apologise to you and your constituents for that frustration from the outset.
'This is not a situation any of us consider acceptable and I welcome this dialogue as a chance to outline the actions we are taking to address these challenges and improve the service we provide to the public.'
The RSA also runs the NCT services with a backlog in tests this year resulting in people waiting up to two weeks for an appointment.
WEATHER WOES
RSA exec Sam Waide blamed the series of storms and cold
He said: 'This is driven by the fall out of closures during the service's busiest period in quarter one due to the red weather event and snowfall affecting the operational capacity of the service.
'Over the past month the service has been below the SLA of 12 days on several occasions and the service is expected to be at 12 days by the end of June.'
PROGRESS PROMISE
Chair of the Transport Committee Michael Murphy warned the RSA that the watchdog will be keeping a close eye on the progress that is made on cutting wait times for both driving tests and NCTs over the coming months.
He said: 'The RSA have said there are early indicators of progress, which will be welcome to many, but we need to see driving test waiting times below the target of 10 weeks.
'It's essential that the RSA are striving to get waiting times as short as possible.'
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