Cullen insists driving tests be outsourced

Minister for Transport Martin Cullen is to press ahead with plans to outsource driving tests to a private company despite a labour relations ruling against the scheme. Mr Cullen has also questioned the quality of current tests and said private testers would have an impetus to clear tests that was "not there at present".

He was speaking yesterday before his announcement of the new board of the Road Safety Authority.

The scheme to privatise 40,000 tests was proposed by Mr Cullen more than a year ago in an attempt to cut the 10-month waiting list of more than 130,000 provisional drivers.

However, testers opposed the move and a 12-month dispute ended last month when the Civil Service Arbitration Board upheld the union's claim that driver testing was core Civil Service work, and therefore could not be outsourced without union agreement under the terms of Sustaining Progress, the partnership programme.

Despite this, Mr Cullen said yesterday he was "absolutely clear" that tests must be outsourced. "We have to remove the backlog asap. We will have to do that and we will have to use the private sector - it's as simple as that and there can be no equivocation on that."

He said he had been "deeply frustrated" by the testers' refusal to support any outsourcing and he could not allow any future partnership agreement to block outsourcing. The current Sustaining Progress talks would result in his having the power to put the scheme in place, he said.

"You can be sure it will, you can take that as written."

However, Impact, the union representing testers, said it would be unthinkable that the outsourcing issue would be a component of national pay talks.

"There are no circumstances where a national agreement would deal with one particular set of circumstances that a minister is having a tantrum over," Tom Hoare of Impact said.

Impact had put proposals to Mr Cullen and through current arrangements had conducted an extra 7,000 tests in nine weeks, he said. The union had used the industrial relations process and was abiding by its outcome.

If the testers had allowed outsourcing a year ago, the backlog would now be cleared, Mr Cullen said. The private company would have had a "great impetus" to get the waiting list down, "an element that's not there at present".

He said he was also concerned about the quality of the tests. Pass rates were "very high" in some parts of the country and very low in others, and he could not see a reason for such variance between testers. However, Irish pass rates tallied with European figures, Mr Hoare said.

The Minister was speaking ahead of the launch of a new road safety advertising campaign which aims to change driver behaviour by illustrating how certain manoeuvres should be conducted. The first of these television advertisements will concentrate on showing how to make a right turn, overtake, drive on bends and keep a distance from the car in front.