Amnesty needed for driver’s license applications
The waiting time for driving tests need to be drastically reduced to that people can “get on with their lives” according to a Cork county councillor.
At Monday’s full meeting of Cork County Council, Fianna Fáil’s Seamus McGrath called for immediate action to be taken by the Department of Transport and the Road Safety Authority (RSA) to reduce wait times for driver's licenses which he said can be as long as 10 months.
Cllr McGrath called the delays “totally unacceptable” and said he felt the RSA’s target of 10 weeks, although a big improvement, would still be too long in his opinion.
“It’s a scandalously long time for someone to wait for a driving test,” said Mr McGrath.
He added: “This has an enormous impact on people's lives. For people who do not have the options for public transport available to them, particularly in rural areas, they are not able to travel to work, to school, to college, to medical appointments.”
Cllr McGrath accepted that the Department of Transport and the RSA have made progress in addressing waiting times with efforts to recruit 75 new testers, but he said he does not expect any improvement until well into next year.
“As I understand it, at the start of this year there were over 50,000 people eligible for the driving test awaiting a date,” he said.
Cllr Sheila O’Callaghan (FF) said young people in rural areas are particularly affected by long waiting times.
She said: “I recently met a young lad who had taken on a summer job but his mom has to drive him and collect him, whereas he thought at this stage he would have his license. When I asked him how long he was on the waiting list, he said over 5 months.”
Ms O’Callaghan asked if the Department of Transport and the RSA could consider some form of amnesty “just to clear the backlog”.
“We are talking about this now for a couple of years and nothing has improved. As a matter of fact, it's worse things have gotten,” she said.
Cllr Michael Hegarty (FG) suggested a solution, similar to that introduced in the late ‘70s, whereby drivers on their second provisional license could be granted a full license. He said it helped to alleviate the backlog back then and should be considered by the RSA.
Cllr Michael Looney (FF) added: “The backlog won't be cleared for another 10 years unless and amnesty is introduced.”
Fianna Fáil’s Audrey Buckley said her daughter is currently in the process of applying for a license and has been waiting for a date since January.
“She's paying her own car insurance and what's going to happen is, she'll get an email back stating that she's in a queue to wait to get a date for her driving test, and in September/October her insurance is not going to go down because she's still a learner driver. It affects us all in different ways and I think the amnesty sounds like a great idea.”
It was unanimously agreed that Cork County Council would send a letter to both the Department of Transport and the RSA asking them to use any means possible to reduce waiting times for driving licenses.