The Road Safety Authority (RSA) has said the average national waiting time for a car driving test now stands at 10.4 weeks.
In a statement today the authority said the figures were “a significant improvement but still in excess of its service-level agreement”, which is to reach an average of 10 weeks waiting time.
“We are steadfast in our commitment to bring the average down to 10 weeks and below. This is not the finish line – we know that some learners are still waiting longer than they should, and we are determined to fix that.
“A number of centres continue to have an unacceptable wait time and our priority remains ensuring more equality, uniformity and balance between supply and demand across the country.”
RM Block
Last week, however, the figures had reached a national average waiting time of 9.57 weeks. Road safety campaign group Parc compiled the figures from the RSA’s data.
Chair of Parc Susan Gray said that on Friday August 22nd the authority had reached its target and beyond, based on its weekly website updates since May, which the campaign group “monitors closely”.
Ms Gray said: “We are very disappointed that within five days the average waiting times have increased in some test centres bringing the average back up from 9.57 to 10.4.”
This was “alarming” and “it’s even more alarming that we do not know which centres have increased their waiting times”.
Last week’s figures showed that candidates in Tallaght, Co Dublin, still have to wait 15 weeks for their test. The Tallaght test centre has, however, shown the largest drop of 21 weeks in waiting time, from 36 at the end of May to 15 currently.
Charlestown, Co Dublin, is the one test centre where waiting times have increased, from nine to 17 weeks, the longest wait of any test centre. The overall average waiting time in Dublin city and county, including all eight test centres, is now 12 weeks.
The authority said it had been “working intensively to reduce waiting times following unprecedented demand.
“This reduction, down from 27 weeks at the end of April, reflects the impact and progress of the RSA’s action plan of additional tester recruitment, reallocation of resources and focused management of test centre capacity.”
In May Minister of State for Transport Seán Canney instructed the authority to reduce waiting times to a target national average of 10 weeks by September 1st.
Seventy additional driver testers were approved with a majority in place and the remainder in training to bring the number up to 200.
The RSA said the full deployment of tests and the opening of additional test centres in the coming weeks were key measures to bring waiting times down further.
The authority also acknowledged the temporary impact on waiting times for other vehicle categories, such as buses and trucks, due to the focus on training and mentoring for new testers.
“Our focus remains firmly on sustained improvement, supporting learner drivers, and meeting our commitments across all licence categories.”
