Postcode lottery of wait times for driving tests
Nine-month exam delay for learners as Ireland records highest road fatalities in six years
SOME learner drivers are being forced to wait up to nine months to do a test, while motorists in other parts of the country have much smaller waiting times.
A survey of the 57 test centres across the country carried out by the Irish Mail on Sunday on the same day last week confirms significant discrepancies in wait times depending on where you live.
Drivers seeking to take the test in Dun Laoghaire and Kilkenny face a waiting list of more than 37 weeks until next September.
Test centres in Buncrana, Co. Donegal, Wilton in Cork, and Killester in Dublin had a queue stretching until next August.
In Donegal town, Naas, Co. Kildare, Roscommon, Skibbereen in Co. Cork and Tallaght and Mulhuddart in Dublin, the nearest available slot for a test in July.
A further 17 test centres had no available appointments until May.
The long waiting times at these centres contrasted with other parts of the country such as Ennis, Co. Clare and Newcastle West in Co.
Limerick, which both had tests slots available from March 4.
On its website, the Road Safety Authority (RSA) stressed all of the displayed dates are estimates, and that applicants must first join the waiting list and then be invited to take a test.
The discrepancies in waiting times across the country comes as the body representing driving instructors called on the RSA to address the backlog in the worst affected areas.
Professional Driving Instructors Association [PDIA] director Dominic Brophy said the RSA has ‘badly let down’ learners, particularly in rural areas.
He told the MoS: ‘There are big inconsistencies with waiting times across the country but one thing is for sure, there are long waiting lists in all of them.
‘The main problem is this; the RSA let lots of temporary testers go last year and then the waiting lists filled up and they needed to re-advertise and retrain. It was a massive waste of time and money.
‘It is amazing. These decisions are having huge ramifications on the lifestyle of people, especially those in rural areas, which also have less public transport.’
Waiting times soared during the Covid lockdowns, when tests temporarily halted.
But according to another PDIA director, Darragh Dunne, queues have ‘not gotten much shorter since testing resumed’. He told the MoS: ‘Problems still persist as we head into 2024. With the queues being so long, by the time people get an invitation to book a test they have forgotten half of what they learned in the compulsory lessons, especially if they do not have a car to practice in.
‘Then they get offered test dates without sufficient time to fix their bad habits, they fail and go back on the queue again. Alternatively, they give up trying to follow the system and start driving on their own.’
Details of the significant backlog in some parts of the country come as Ireland recorded the highest road fatalities since 2016, when 182 people died on our roads.
As of last night, 182 people died in collisions this year, a significant jump on the 155 fatalities recorded in 2022. According to Dominic Brophy, there is a link between an increase in accidents and long waiting lists for tests.
He said: ‘Long waiting lists are detrimental to road safety. Absolutely there’s a link.
‘The biggest percentage of people dying on the roads are between 17 and 25 years of age. It’s no coincidence that these are the people who haven’t taken their tests.’
Mr Brophy called on the RSA to ‘consult and communicate’ with instructors, saying members of the PDIA have ‘tens of thousands of hours of experience’.
He added: ‘We have many ways in which we could improve road safety but we’re not consulted. We do the vast majority of the work of training people and knowing what works and what doesn’t. They [RSA] need to communicate with us properly.’
In response to queries from the MoS, the RSA said ‘the Driver Testing Service is experiencing very high and unprecedented demand over the past year or so’.
A spokesman noted that the number of applications for a test in 2022 were 28% higher than the previous year, and that the RSA ‘continues to see increased application volumes throughout 2023’.
The spokesman added: ‘The current increase in time to invitation to book a test for learner drivers has a number of contributing factors which include; an increase in learner permits in circulation, which has grown by about 30% since 2019; increased capacity in the Driver Theory Test when the service resumed post-Covid and an increase in Advanced Driving Instructors’ (ADIs) capacity to deliver lessons to learner drivers, which has increased the volume of learners becoming eligible and ready to take their test.’
‘It was a massive waste of time and money’