Final proposals for the regulation of driving instructors have been drawn up by the Road Safety Authority and are to be signed off by Minister for Transport Martin Cullen within weeks.
The proposals, which require driving instructors to undergo a three-part test, as well as obtaining Garda, tax and vehicle clearance certificates, bring to an end more than a decade of uncertainty surrounding the regulation of driving schools.
The industry is to have a statutory Driving Instructor Register (DIR) to replace the current voluntary one, to which only two-thirds of drivers have affiliated.
Speaking yesterday, chief executive of the Road safety Authority Noel Brett said the final regulations which are to be published in full in March would offer "no grandfathering" to existing driving instructors, thereby preventing them from moving to the new register without meeting the new test requirements.
However, he said it was not the intention of the authority to put anyone out of business and existing instructors would be given time to bring their operations up to standard.
Driving instructors will in future have to have dual drive vehicles which will have to be certified for roadworthiness, while the instructors themselves will have to have certificates from the Garda saying they have not been convicted of any anti-social type offences.
The three-part test will include examination on driving theory, practice and the ability to teach. Mr Brett said the proposals would be expected to become mandatory by July of this year - around the same time capacity in the driving test system is predicted to exceed demand for tests.
The Department of Transport has been seeking regulation of the industry for a long time and agreed to fund the voluntary register of driving instructors in 1996.
However, there was no obligation on anyone calling themselves a driving instructor to join the register, and gardaí refused to carry out background checks on instructors as the register was not a statutory body.
Mr Brett also told The Irish Times that a call for tenders for a company to provide a minimum of 100,000 driving tests per year was placed in the European Journal on January 29th.
The tender may be awarded after 50 days giving a date at the end of March or early April for the appointment of a contract.
Mr Brett said that counting the RSA's own testers, and an additional 29 employed by the already contracted company SGS, he believed capacity in the driving test system would exceed demand by July of this year.
That does not mean, however, that all waiting lists will be erased by then, but that "within 14 months we should be able to move to an eight- to 10-week waiting period for a driving test".
