On Thursday’s Morning Focus, Alan was joined by Morning Focus listener Michelle who shared her thoughts on the current driving test waiting list situation in Shannon. Michelle expressed her frustration regarding the current 35 week wait to obtain a drive test in the Shannon area. She stated that at one stage, no driving tests were carried out in Shannon for a period of five weeks. Following a statement from the RSA, Michelle is hopeful that new testers will be trained and ready to work from October.
Please see RSA response below
The national average waiting time is currently 22 weeks, which far exceeds the agreed acceptable waiting time for invitation to test of 10 weeks. The RSA have recently been given sanction to recruit up to 75 additional driver testers to address current waiting times and demand for the service. It is expected that new testers will be trained and ready to work from October of this year. With these new testers in place, customers will see improvements in their waiting times and the RSA expect the backlog of applicants to be returned to target customer service levels by the end of the first quarter of 2024.
As of 30 April 2023
17,424 tests have been booked.
60,627 are awaiting a test.
48,100 candidate applications are paused, meaning they have received an invite and not used it within the 10-day window available.
A further 27,280 are not eligible to take a test. This may be that they’ve only had their learner permit for less than 6 months or haven’t completed their mandatory 12 pre-test driving lessons.
You can find the waiting times for an Invitation for each test centre here. rsa.powerappsportals.com/drivertest-e…6045bd8ced0f
Previously backlogs built up during Covid and these were alleviated following recruitment of temporary testers. The agreed ten week wait for a driving test was achieved by October 2021. However, the service has been under severe pressure to meet unprecedented demand. The number of applications for a driving test in 2022 was 28% higher compared to 2021 figures. The current increase in demand for driving tests and the 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 Q3 2019.
increased capacity in the Driver Theory Test when the service resumed post Covid-19 pandemic; 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 actual test. There are currently 2,326 ADIs as of Feb 2023 which is up from 2,047 in 2021.
You can listen to the full interview below.
