MORE THAN 80 driving testers working for a private company will not have their contracts renewed, due to a sharp decline in the number of learner drivers waiting for a test.
SGS Ireland, which provides driving tests to the Road Safety Authority (RSA), confirmed that 19 driver testers were let go last Friday as their contracts expired, and further 62 will be made redundant on December 23rd.
According to the most recent data available from the RSA, the average waiting time for a driving test is now under eight weeks and 64,619 drivers were on the waiting list as of December 1st.
In the middle of December last year, there were 178,000 people waiting for a test after concern over new restrictions for drivers on a second provisional licence resulted in a huge spike in applications.
As a result SGS increased its testing capacity and hired additional staff to help RSA testers reduce the backlog.
SGS secured two contracts to provide driving tests, the first for 45,000 tests, and the second for a minimum of 100,000 and hired approximately 160 staff on contract to provide driving tests.
The RSA was given funding of around €6 million in the recent Budget to procure driving tests as required in 2009 with the aim of keeping the waiting time under 10 weeks.
Negotiations between the RSA and SGS on the provision of tests for next year are due to begin shortly.
Driving tests were carried out at more than 40 national car test centres across the State, and the additional capacity finally brought an end to a legacy of waiting up to a year for a driving test. Waiting times for a driving test fell to 10 weeks in June.
While the reduction in waiting times is good news for learner motorists, it comes at a difficult period for SGS.
A wholly-owned subsidiary of SGS Ireland, NCTS Ltd, is likely to lose the lucrative contract to operate the national car test after it was ranked second in a tender to provide the service for the next 10 years.
The contract, which is worth more than €400 million at 2008 prices, is to provide over 11 million car tests between 2010 and 2019. The contract for the service is expected to be signed before Christmas.
Separately, driver testers from the RSA and SGS have reported that a significant number of driving test applicants are arriving driving unaccompanied to test centres.
They also noted that other test applicants were only attaching L-plates on arrival at the test centre, and then removing them after the test, regardless of whether they passed the test.
