The current major backlog in driving tests could have been avoided if the Government had consulted "front-line staff", a union leader has claimed.
Civil, Public and Services Union general secretary Blair Horan told delegates to the union's annual conference in Galway that staff had been attempting to highlight problems in the driving test system for some time.
"For years our members in Ballina, who process the applications, have been complaining about the lack of investment in the applications processing system," he said.
"A citizen can apply for their driving test online but when that data comes in to Ballina, it must be manually re-entered by our members into the computer system. I kid you not."
Mr Horan claimed the Government had neglected problems in the system for years, and now Minister for Transport Martin Cullen wanted to get rid of those problems by outsourcing.
It was not surprising that CPSU members, and driver-testers who were members of Impact, had little sympathy with this approach, he said. It was "patently obvious" that with redeployed surplus staff from the Department of Agriculture and "some new testers", the backlog could "just as easily be cleared within the system".
The Government's plan to outsource 40,000 driving tests to a private company, as part of an effort to reduce waiting times, has been blocked as a result of a case taken by Impact and the CPSU to the Civil Service Arbitration Board.
The board upheld the unions' claim that driver testing was core Civil Service work, and therefore could not be outsourced without union agreement under the terms of the partnership programme, Sustaining Progress.
Some 130,000 people are on waiting lists for driving tests and face waiting times of up to 47 weeks at some test centres. Impact says alternative proposals it has made could have cut the waiting list by 45,000 in the last nine months.
Concern about outsourcing was among the major themes of the CPSU conference, which concluded on Saturday. A senior official of the union, Eoin Ronayne, claimed outsourcing had become "the Mecca" for employers.
"For some years now, the private sector, and indeed some semi-state companies, have been chipping away at jobs and pay and conditions in the name of delivery of greater productivity and reduced costs. In the main this is code for cheap labour and abused workers," he said.
Mr Ronayne, whose appointment as deputy general secretary-designate of the CPSU was ratified by delegates, said it was time for unions to unite to "drive back the outsourcing agenda and regain workers' rights and conditions across the country".
One of the "first opportunities" to do so was at An Post, which was in talks with international finance house Fortis about setting up a new banking force, using the An Post office network.
This project presented the CPSU with a number of critical challenges. "As the union which represents clerical grades in the existing finance section of An Post headquarters, we expect to hold representation rights for all clerical grades in the new business entity," Mr Ronayne said.
"We will do all in our power to see off any attempt to undercut our existing terms and conditions," he added.
