The issue of road safety has not ever been so topical. The death toll on the roads has reached staggering new heights and clearly the time has come for a new approach to how we go about driving and observing both the rules of the road and the laws governing driving standards.
As the Minister will be aware, part of the problem related to the high level of road accidents is that there continues to be so many young, inexperienced drivers on the road. However, there are also many young drivers who have developed excellent driving skills, but who, because of huge waiting lists for the driving test, continue to drive with an L-plate and pay high insurance for their cars. It is this specific issue that I intend to address this evening.
I appreciate that the waiting times have reduced considerably in recent times, but people are still being forced to wait months before being called. I am currently dealing with a case where a young man has been waiting for more than a year now.
We require a range of measures to deal with the bottlenecks and ensure that tests can be taken without delays. However, there is an apparent shortage of qualified testers. In test centres throughout the country, there is tremendous pressure on existing testers to carry out tests. It seems, no matter how many tests they attempt to fit in on a working day, the list of applicants does not decrease. If there is to be real efficiency in testing, there must be more testers.
In Kildare South, there is a growing population of young people, many of whom have moved out of Dublin due to rising house prices but continue to work in Dublin. The housing crisis has forced them into car ownership because they must now commute to and from work on a daily basis. Of these drivers, most have gone to the expense of purchasing a decent car which will serve them for the daily commute. In addition, they have forked out money for expensive driving lessons, which now cost between £15 and £25 per lesson. While their driving skills, as a consequence of their lessons, are quite good these young drivers are being forced to pay incredibly high insurance rates. There are many older drivers on the road who are not quite as au fait with the rules of the road as younger drivers. The car insurance bill for a couple with provisional licences, in their early thirties, driving a 1.1 litre car would be in the region of £1,500. This is exorbitant, particularly when one considers that these young people are generally paying more than £600 per month in mortgage repayments.
At this stage, with labour shortages and inevitable difficulties in recruiting testers, it may be time to look at alternatives such as, for instance, contracting out the work to driving schools. In every part of Ireland there are competent driving testers who have set up driving schools. There must be a means by which the Minister for the Environment and Local Government could allow the tests to be carried out by such people. In any case, I would argue for new targets for waiting lists. The financial burden on young commuters should not be made worse by the shortcomings of the Department of the Environment and Local Government.
