Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said he will not sack Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey if deadlines on driver testing are not met.
As the Opposition targeted Mr Dempsey, following his reversal of the decision on provisional licences, Mr Ahern was pressed by Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny to say if he would sack the Minister.
"No," said Mr Ahern. Mr Kenny asked: "You are going to go on with the usual ?" Mr Ahern said: "I'm going to let him go on with the job . . . that's the important thing. He won't do what he likes . . . he will try and do his job to the best of his ability . . . and he is doing that."
Earlier, Mr Kenny said he had never seen such a monumental fiasco perpetrated on Irish people, by any minister in any government, despite the fact that the issue was discussed in some detail by the Cabinet on "their quarter-million salaries" and above.
"The handling of this provisional licence situation is a complete and utter shambles and forced Mr Dempsey into the most public, humiliating U-turn in Irish political history.
"He has demeaned the Road Safety Authority, demeaned the persons working there and given people the impression that legislation in this country is not something to be respected."
Mr Kenny said Mr Ahern was aware that Mr Dempsey had made a shambles of electronic voting. He had intended to bring in third-level fees until he discovered that "the plain people of Ireland were not going to wear that".
He added that Mr Dempsey had used the official resources of the Department of Education to provide Fianna Fáil material for the local elections.
"Despite all that, you appointed him as Minister for Transport on June 14th and since then, unfortunately, it has gone from bad to worse.
"He tried to renege on a clear promise to introduce mandatory blood testing at the scene of an accident. He presided over the loss of slots from Shannon-Heathrow; he failed to appoint directors who could have explained to the board what it was about. He had appointed an official to inquire into her own actions in the department."
Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said: "If Mr Dempsey were a driver rather than a minister, he would be on his third provisional licence at this stage with no prospect of passing the test."
He asked how bad it had to get "before the 'r' word dawns on somebody"' on the Government benches. In Britain, there were five or six cases of ministerial resignations.
"In this country, no matter what a minister does, no matter how badly he screws up, there is no question of a resignation or an apology to the House.
"What you do is you reward him with an increase in pay. How bad does a minister have to be? How many mistakes, Taoiseach, does a minister have to make before his continuance in office becomes an issue with you?"
Mr Ahern said Mr Dempsey had made his changes based on the fact that the initiative would have been unfair to provisional drivers. By next July, he said, everybody had to get on the right side of the law. "I think it is a sensible solution, rather than forcing people off the road."
Mr Ahern said the issue was affecting 430,000 people. "That is the entire number of provisional licences that there are." He said that more than 40,000 people were on their fifth provisional licence, while only one in five provisional licence holders was applying for tests.
