The chairman of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport yesterday called on the new Road Safety Authority (RSA) to consider introducing compulsory testing for foreign national drivers taking up work here.
Addressing a meeting of the committee, John Ellis TD (Fianna Fáil) said anyone who was used to driving on the right-hand side could experience difficulties when they drove here.
There were also, he said, frequently language and other problems associated with road signage.
He said while anyone working in construction had to have safety training, this was not the case for non-national drivers here.
Speaking afterwards, Mr Ellis said any testing system could be provided by the private sector.
It might entail an intensive one-day session or a series of hour-long sessions. There would be a test at the end.
Such training could educate people used to driving on the right-hand side of the road to the different problems they faced when driving on the left.
He added that such a system could also help to ensure the roadworthiness of foreign vehicles.
However, committee member Olivia Mitchell TD (Fine Gael) said while it was always necessary to get the safety message across to foreign nationals, there were also many members of the public - for example, some 400,000 provisional drivers alone - who had never faced a test.
She said in that context it "ill behoves us" to ask foreign nationals to undertake extra training.
The meeting also heard a submission from the Driving Instructors' Register of Ireland, which called for its standards to be recognised under any changes to the system for instructor registration planned by the RSA.
However, Des Cummins, chief executive of the register, noted that it operated on a voluntary basis as there was no compulsory registration system in the State for driving instructors.
In a separate presentation the Irish Drivers' Association, which claims to represent some 8,000 members nationwide, criticised the current national car testing (NCT) system which, it said, was a "monopoly".
Several committee members also supported calls by the association for the mid-term review of the NCT to be published.