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Candidates applying for a driving test this week will likely have to wait eight months for an appointment due to the Covid-19 delays.
With the situation getting worse in the lead up to Christmas, it will be the second quarter of next year before the new testers can make significant advancements in the order book.
That’s according to the Road Safety Authority (RSA), which said 43,192 people are now waiting for an appointment. When service was suspended in March due to the coronavirus, the average wait time for a driving test was less than six weeks.
The test centers reopened for car testing on July 29 and have only recently reached 75 percent capacity and are unlikely to exceed that while working amid Covid-19 restrictions.
A total of 15,111 people are expected to undergo a test over the next five weeks. However, these are not part of the 43,192 awaiting appointments and the RSA said the lists are expected to lengthen in the lead up to Christmas.
“From now on, given the large number of people already waiting for a driving test appointment, anyone requesting a test will likely face a 30-week delay in getting an appointment,” the authority said.
Candidates whose test appointments were canceled when service was suspended have been offered a test date. Appointments were offered in order of application date and for essential worker cases.
Cancellation list
The test centers are also operating a cancellation list. The RSA said it was taking a series of steps including: increasing the number of tests a driver evaluator can take each day from five to six; schedule additional overtime tests, including tests on Saturdays; rehire up to 19 previously employed driver testers; recruitment and training of new test pilots.
However, the authority said that “it will be the second quarter of 2021 before these new additions begin to impact waiting times.”
The authority appealed to any candidate who is unable to attend their test to contact them so that the position can be assigned to another candidate on the cancellation list.
Reservation
Details of the backlog came as RSA-approved driving instructors protested at test centers in Finglas and Sligo over Covid-19 restrictions denying them access to test center facilities. The instructors, members of the Unite union, also want to engage with the security authority in designing the 12 mandatory lessons candidates must take. They also want to end the use of paper log books as the Covid-19 crisis continues.
Separately, there are also car test delays. On Friday, the website of the National Automobile Testing Service offered the next available appointments in January 2021 for various centers. However, a spokeswoman for the service said it was possible to secure a place on a “priority list” for appointments earlier. The spokeswoman said that not all available appointments were put online at the same time, and anyone who needed appointments before those offered online could be placed on the priority list.
The priority list is not a cancellation list, but is designed to offer clients priority scheduling when more appointments are posted, he said.
The reason appointments are posted this way was to help operators with staff scheduling, he added.
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