Irish people are giving serious lie to all the predictions that fewer and fewer people are interested in driving to want to take a driving test.
Right now the average waiting time, from making the booking to actually sitting your test, is 27 weeks – nearly seven months – while in some individual testing locations it’s stretching to and beyond 10 months.
The delay is not merely an inconvenience. Learner drivers pay a higher rate of insurance, so every month that they have to wait for a test means paying excessive insurance costs.
Equally, those who are required to hold a valid full licence to qualify for certain jobs are being left behind by a system which has been badly under-resourced for some time.
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The blame for delays has been placed on learners who book tests and then don’t show up for them. Yet it’s clear that it must also lie with the organisation of Ireland’s road tests, the Road Safety Authority (RSA).
[ Driving tests: New centres and expanded hours in bid to ease waiting timesOpens in new window ]
Two weeks ago Seán Canney, the Minister of State with responsibility for road transport, seemingly finally lost patience with the RSA, and ordered it to “publish their plan, showing their projections of average wait time and numbers of tests to be carried out on a fortnightly basis to end 2025″.
According to a department spokesperson: “The Minister further instructed the RSA to report publicly and to him fortnightly on delivery of their plan, with any deviations from projected timelines to be immediately addressed with the Department of Transport.”
That plan has now been published, and the RSA says it has committed to reducing the wait time to 10 weeks from booking to testing.
The published plan includes speeding up the training programme for new examiners, with new training facilities opened to help.
Then the plan is to extend the hours during which a test can be conducted, stretching it from 7.25am to 7pm. This would suggest that this plan will only work through mid-October, as tests can’t be conducted in the dark.
The RSA is also planning to expand testing hours to include Saturdays and bank holidays. There is also a plan to take manual control of the online-booking system to try to ensure that test dates are issued first to those areas, where the backlog is at its greatest – largely in the Greater Dublin Area. Finally the RSA wants to open 19 new driver testing centres around the country, bringing the total to 60.
Sam Waide, the RSA’s chief executive, said: “We know how frustrating and disruptive these delays are – especially for people who need a licence for work, college, or caring responsibilities. I want to offer a sincere apology to everyone who has been affected.
“Our team has developed a focused, projection-based plan to improve availability and reduce wait times. Every part of the system is being mobilised to deliver for the public. The RSA will publish progress updates every fortnight via its website to ensure full transparency and public awareness as the plan advances.
“We’re asking customers to support the effort by cancelling early if they cannot attend, so that appointments can be offered to others. Every cancelled slot that’s reused helps us reduce the backlog faster. Also, we’re urging customers to ensure they are prepared for their test, as 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.”
[ The Irish Times view on delays for driving tests: another stop-gap solutionOpens in new window ]
In response, Mr Canney said: “The provision of a timely and efficient driver-testing service is a key priority for me. The experience of learner drivers seeking a driver test over the last number of years has been unacceptable, and the service being offered needs to be greatly improved as soon as possible.
“I welcome the RSA plan to bring wait times down to 10 weeks by no later than early September, and I expect the RSA to fully deliver on this commitment.
“There can be no deviation from this timeline, and I have instructed the RSA to ensure contingency plans and remedial measures are in place and ready to deploy to ensure that no slippage occurs. I have also instructed the RSA to publish their plan, progress reports, projected wait times and driver tester numbers by centre to ensure that the public is fully informed of the progress being made.”
However, there are significant doubts that the RSA can make its plans work. Certainly, the agency’s track record is less than stellar, and while a Government commitment to deploying an additional 70 driving test examiners was made late last year, the first tranche of those examiners has only begun to take up their posts in the past two weeks.
Responding to the RSA’s plan, Dominic Lumsden of People Insurance pointed out just how much the delays are actually costing Irish drivers: “The most recent data we have from the RSA shows that as at August 2024, of the almost 370,000 learner permit drivers in Ireland, almost 160,000 of these are on their second or more learner permit, while 37,000 drivers have rolled over to at least their fifth learner permit.
“All of these drivers are likely facing a three-zero bill for car insurance each year and losing out on significant savings by failing to pass their driving test.
“At the end of 2024 we ran some quote calculations which showed that learner permit drivers are paying as much as 17 per cent more for car insurance than those on a full licence. Car insurance costs for young people in particular can be prohibitive, especially when they are just starting out on the road.
“The market analysis that we ran showed that young learner drivers are facing premiums of €2,000-plus, and possibly as much as €2,618 a year, to get insured on the road.
“There are substantial savings to be made by moving from a learner permit to a full licence – to the tune of about €386 a year for some young drivers. Given the ongoing loading which those on learner permits would otherwise face, the savings will add up over the years.”
There are ways around the delays, however. With 41 testing centres in operation around the country, clearly some are going to have shorter waiting times than others, and if you feel comfortable that you’ll be able to pass your test on unfamiliar roads, then it might be worth booking at a distant test centre to take your test (allowing for the extra organisation of having a fully-licensed driver accompany you half way across the country).
Helpfully, insurance search site Quote Devil has crunched the numbers and come up with a list of Irish driver testing centres that not only have shorter waiting times, but also have a higher percentage of learner drivers passing their test first time out.
According to Quote Devil’s research, the testing centre with the shortest average wait time of those where more than 50 per cent of applicants pass first time out, with the wait at 13.3 weeks, half the national average, is Tuam in Co Galway. That centre also manages to schedule 92 per cent of its applications within a month, so your chances of getting an early test are quite good.
Next best is Ennis, Co Clare, on 13.5 weeks, followed by Thurles, Co Tipperary (14.3 weeks); Tipperary town (14.3 weeks); Loughrea, Co Galway (14.5 weeks); Shannon, Co Clare (15.8 weeks); Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim (17.2 weeks); Cavan town (17.6 weeks); and Monaghan town (18.8 weeks).
What about the worst? According to Quote Devil’s figures, the centre with the longest average wait for a test, of those with a passing average less than 50 per cent, is Dún Laoghaire/Deansgrange, with an average wait of 30.6 weeks, three weeks longer than the national average.
That’s a full seven months, and that’s just the average. Next worst is Naas, Co Kildare, on 25 weeks, and Tallaght, Co Dublin, on 24.4 weeks.
The centre with the lowest passing rate is Charlestown, Co Dublin, where only 36.2 per cent of applicants pass on the first go. Mind you, Charlestown only makes you wait 16 weeks on average for a test, so at least you can get booked again relatively quickly.
