The Road Safety Authority (RSA) has published an action plan aimed at reducing driving test waiting times nationwide to an average of 10 weeks by September of this year.
At present the average waiting time is 22 weeks with 103,579 candidates in the backlog waiting to be tested.
The plan does not contain any increase in Driver Tester staff for county Tipperary. As of January this year there were 5 Driving Testers working the county one in each of Thurles, Tipperary town and Nenagh and two in Clonmel – at present there is only one in Clonmel. The national total number of Driving Testers is to increase from 151 in January of this year to 200 by September with no additional staff allocated to county Tipperary.
The plan also proposes to accelerate the training of new testers through the use of additional training facilities, to expanding testing hours, including overtime for weekday evenings, Saturdays, and bank holidays – with tests running from 07:25am to 7pm and targeted manual intervention in the booking system to ensure invitations are issued to areas of greatest demand. The plan also says new Driving Test Centres will open in key areas bringing the national total to 60 centres without identifying those locations.
253,850 driving tests were conducted last year representing a 61% increase in the number of conducted tests since 2021. The RSA says that customers can help by cancelling early if they cannot use their appointment and adds that over “4,000 tests so far this year couldn’t be conducted for reasons such as vehicles without a valid NCT, Tax, Insurance or not deemed roadworthy.”
