I am a statistic. Usually my life is considerably more interesting than this, but right now, I am a figure; one of the 128,412 people in the State on a provisional licence, awaiting a driving test.
I can't speak for the other 128,411 people out there, but I am certain I'm not alone in being distinctly unimpressed with the current shambles of the waiting-for-driving-test scenario.
Fádo, fádo, back on May 6th, I applied online for a driving test and forked out my credit card payment. Some time later, a letter confirming my application dropped through the letterbox.
After that flurry of activity, silence. Months passed. Flowers bloomed. Flowers faded. Leaves fell. My temper began to rise every time I passed my car and saw those two big red L-Plates; scarlet letters of shame indeed.
I don't like being forced to remain a Learner Driver. I want the chance to get a full licence.
No matter how you pussyfoot around the issue, drivers without L-Plates universally loathe learner drivers. We are a lesser breed of animal on the road, and officially unwelcome on motorways.
However, the insurance companies love us, since they can charge us oodles and oodles of euro for a policy, and then tell us patronisingly that we are lucky to get one at all. The longer I wait for a test, and remain on a provisional licence, the higher my insurance policy stays. I don't like that either.
By unlucky circumstances of my own making, I've ended up being on a third licence. The first two licences I applied for, I never actually sat behind the wheel of a car, so I essentially wasted them.
Since then, now on a third licence, I have actually taken a proper course of lessons, bought a car, and learned to drive.
The chief reason I am so exercised about my several months of waiting for a test is that, since I am on a third licence, I am thus obliged by law to have someone with a full licence with me every time I drive.
It's hugely restrictive, but what's so galling about it is that there is absolutely nothing I can personally do to change my situation, bar waiting. I want a full licence, I've applied months ago for a test, my intentions of being a safe and legal unaccompanied driver are totally clear - I'm keeping my part of the bargain and the Government is failing to keep up its end.
A year ago, the average waiting time for a test was 11 weeks. Last week, it was reported that the average waiting time now is 39 weeks. Ten months!
And if you're unlucky enough to live in Naas, it's just shy of a year, at 51 weeks. You would wonder if the Department of Transport were trying to get an entry in the Guinness Book of Records.
We all know why there has been such a big increase in the number of test applications; Minister Brennan announced last December that all provisional licence holders who fail a test will (at some unspecified date) be legally obliged to be accompanied by a full licence holder.
Surprise, surprise, people on second licences, who are currently allowed to drive solo, applied en masse. Instant backlog. There are now 50,000 more people waiting for a test than at this time last year. You probably know one of them.
It is really hard to believe that someone, somewhere in Government Buildings, did not see this coming, and that nobody sat down in advance, looked at the statistics of people holding provisional license, looked at the number of testers and test centres and did a few simple sums. Do none of them know basic maths?
What may have sounded in theory like a sensible idea at the time has become a chaotic PR disaster, because it has since become totally clear it was not planned for properly.
There are currently 113 testers in the State. To deal with the backlog, Minister Brennan proposed bringing back retired testers and offering bonuses to existing staff to work extra hours. Just eight testers are joining the others this week, and not all of them will be working full-time. The Department of Transport had hoped some 80 per cent of existing staff testers would take up the offer of extra hours - a mere three people actually did so. They were not offered enough money to make it worth their while, and who can blame them?
There are some things you can fix with money, and offering existing testers decent one-off payments to work extra weekday hours to help clear the backlog would surely have resulted in a bigger take-up than three. Driving test staff are civil servants and work Monday to Friday, but what about asking them to work some extra hours for decent money - on a Saturday or Sunday for instance?
Given our ghastly record of road fatalities in this country, it is unforgivable that the Government are not doing everything they can to ensure that our drivers are at least in possession of a full driving licence.
After I had waited four months for a test, I wrote a letter to the test centre in Mayo, saying that I needed a full licence for my job (true), and was there any way my date could be speeded up.
Many people do this, and it sometimes works. Another month passed. I called the test centre. They told me they'd never seen my letter, but they offered me a cancelled test date on the spot. It's in two weeks and if I don't pass, I won't have another chance to sit it for another year.
