Government to focus on slashing waiting times for driving tests, says Chambers

The Government will focus on slashing waiting times for driving tests before focusing its attention on thousands of motorists who remain on the roads with numerous renewed learner permits, Minister of State with responsibility for road safety Jack Chambers has said.

Earlier this week, The Irish Times revealed that up to 30,000 people on their third or subsequent learner permit had never sat a test.

In some cases, motorists have gone almost 30 years without ever holding a full licence.

“We have to address that anomaly. The first part of doing that is to build capacity in our testing system,” Mr Chambers said, adding that more testers are now in training.

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[ Revealed: Tens of thousands of people have been driving in Ireland for years without ever taking test ]

“When we bring the wait times down from their current high point my plan next year will be to address some of the people that are on third or fourth licenses that are rolling over their learner permits without conducting a test. It isn’t an acceptable position from a road safety perspective.”

Mr Chambers said there was also a need for a wider review of the system, noting in particular those who were on sixth or seventh learner permits and who had not taken lessons for a number of years.

“[A] learner permit should be about the learning process and then getting the actual driving license, not the historic norm of rolling over learner permits.”

Separately, the Minister said he expected a ramping up of GoSafe speed vans to be in place ahead of Christmas, but would come hand-in-hand with increased garda visibility.

Garda Assistant Commissioner Paula Hilman, head of road traffic, recently said the additional resources made available for the speed vans could not take effect until more vans and staff were in place.

“I know they are using all the current capacity in GoSafe at the moment and then procuring additional vans and staff so there will be a scaling up of that over the next number of weeks,” Mr Chambers said.

“We need to see the GoSafe announcement complimented with a strong visible presence on the ground of roads policing units and we are having that engagement with An Garda Siochana as well.”

Regarding the recently published review of speed limit reductions, Mr Chambers said these default limits would be rolled out through primary legislation alongside other traffic measures including a reform of the penalty points system and mandatory drug testing at the scene of collisions.

Drafted legislation is due to go to Government this month and should take shape in a new Road Traffic Bill before Christmas.

Under the proposals, the new default speed limit on national secondary roads would drop from 100km/h to 80km/h. The default speed limit for the network of local and rural roads throughout the country would be reduced from 80km/h to 60km/h.