The plan to privatise driving tests has been abandoned, and the Government will now seek to retrain surplus Department of Agriculture staff to deal with the backlog of driving tests, writes David Labanyi
The new approach follows an agreement brokered by the Labour Relations Commission between the Department of Transport and unions which had strongly opposed outsourcing.
Instead of granting a contract for 40,000 driving tests to a private firm, surplus staff from the Department of Agriculture and Food will be invited to apply to be trained as driver testers.
It is envisaged that a minimum of 25 and possibly up to 50 Department of Agriculture staff would need to be trained as driver testers with additional administration staff also required.
A spokeswoman for the Minister for Transport said Mr Cullen was delighted with the agreement. She said it would mean an end to the long waiting lists for provisional drivers and that Mr Cullen was pleased the State industrial relations machinery had worked so effectively.
Tom Hoare, Impact assistant general secretary, agreed, saying the approach was a clear case of "conflict avoidance": "Had both sides continued on their original positions, there would have been a major dispute. It is the use of the appropriate structures that have allowed this union proposal to be worked through."
He said using existing civil servants would be cheaper than hiring a private firm because it was "redeploying surplus staff who are already on the payroll."
The union said it was confident that its "insourcing" approach would meet the Department's target of clearing the waiting list of 131,000 drivers by the end of July 2007.
However, Olivia Mitchell, Fine Gael transport spokeswoman said this option should have been explored before private firms were invited to tender to carry out driving tests.
Expressions of interest will be sought from Department of Agriculture staff from this week with a shortlist of candidates to be drawn up before Christmas. Interviews for the new staff are planned for the third week of January with training starting by the middle of February.
The goal is to reduce the average waiting time which now stands at more than 10 months. Outsourcing driving tests was part of a plan by the Minister announced in May, but it quickly ran into opposition from driving testers.
However, some aspects of the Minister's plan, such as employing retired driver testers on short-term contracts and offering a bonus scheme to encourage weekend and night-time tests will be retained.
While agreeing with the alternative to outsourcing, the Department of Transport has expressed a number of reservations. Central among these was that the redeployment and raining of the Department of Agriculture staff was not expected to "make a contribution as quickly as outsourcing: outsourcing has the potential to start delivering tests in February 2006".
There are currently 125 driver testers and supervisors and the Department recently advertised to hire 10 more.
As part of these reservations the Department has retained the right to revisit the issue of outsourcing, and said it would take measures to address the backlog should delays arise in the proposed schedule.