Driver Test Dail Éireann — 2026-03-18 ============================================================ Darragh O'Brien (FF), Dublin Fingal East Gabhaim buíochas leis an Teachta as ucht a cheist ar an ábhar tábhachtach seo. Aontaím leis go ndéanfaimid ár ndícheall chun feabhsú agus dul chun cinn a dhéanamh ar son na ndaoine i nDún Laoghaire. I thank the Deputy for raising this important matter. The Deputy will be aware that under the Road Safety Authority Act, the RSA has statutory responsibility for this. We all know that. Reducing driver testing wait times has been a key priority for the Minister of State, Deputy Canney, and me, and I thank Deputy Ward for acknowledging that there has been progress across the board. In that regard, last May the Minister of State, Deputy Canney, directed the RSA to produce and publish a service recovery plan to return the national average wait time to ten weeks by the beginning of September 2025. Nationally, that has been achieved, but that is little consolation for people in Dún Laoghaire. The current national average waiting time is now 11.5 weeks, slightly above the SLA of ten weeks. I am informed by the RSA that it continues to focus on addressing centres with higher demand and wait times. The latest information provided to me by the RSA, in advance of the Deputy's question, indicates that as of 7 March the average waiting time for a driving test in Dún Laoghaire-Deansgrange was 21 weeks. I agree with the Deputy that that is not acceptable. It does mark a significant improvement on 35 weeks but it is still well above the target ten-week average wait time. I expect the RSA to continue to work to bring the wait time in this centre into line with the ten-week target as soon as possible. The Minister of State, Deputy Canney, has met with RSA senior management regularly on their delivery of the driver testing service recovery plan over recent months and he has emphasised the importance of opening new testing locations to relieve pressures in high-demand areas. I am informed by the authority that the new test centre in Sandyford is at the final stages of preparation and the assigned testers are presently deployed to a nearby centre in readiness for its opening while ensuring testing volumes continue to be managed effectively. I understand, however, that the RSA is just one party to the agreement of leases and that private landlords must also go through their due diligence and assurance processes. I will be very straight with the Deputy. I have a degree of frustration in putting this answer on the floor because we have been aware of this issue with regard to the new test centre for some time. On foot of the Deputy's intervention this evening, I will personally make contact with the Minister of State, Deputy Canney. I will see him in the morning. We need to see how we can expedite this. The new centre in Sandyford will help to relieve some of the pressure on Dún Laoghaire, but if we do not have a firm date for when that is to be open, it is all very well to say that. This needs to be concluded as soon as possible. As the Deputy mentioned, in September we conveyed sanction for an additional 70 driver testing posts on a permanent basis, bringing the total permanent sanction to 200, which represents a doubling of posts since June 2022. As of 7 March, 194 testers were in place, and that again is a big increase. As the Deputy rightly said, there are nine driver testers based in the Dún Laoghaire-Deansgrange test centre. As regards the point the Deputy made about the number of tests we are getting through, which is not in any way to criticise the work being done, we have to see what the reason for that is, where there is a tripling of resources but not a tripling of output. There can be good reasons for that, so I want to look into that. The Deputy highlighted a very serious issue whereby this driver testing centre is way beyond the agreed national SLA of ten weeks and even on the current average now of 11.5 weeks. I will raise this directly with the Minister of State, Deputy Canney. I will speak to the RSA myself on foot of Deputy Ward's question. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-03-18/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:45+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-03-18