PUBLIC ACCOUNTS COMMITTEE:TWENTY-NINE drivers had penalty points for driving the wrong way on a roundabout, the Road Safety Authority said yesterday.

Speaking at the public accounts committee, Noel Brett, chief executive of the authority, said all of the offenders were Irish.

He told committee members the average wait for a driving test was just over eight weeks. Some 15 per cent of tests were cancelled, some by people who had only applied so they could renew their learner permits. This had reduced somewhat since the increase in the testing fee to €75, he said.

Asked by Seán Fleming TD if it was true that testers could refuse to take out a driver if their car smelled of smoke, Mr Brett said it was not the case, though they could refuse if the driver was smoking. Staff had refused to test drivers when their cars had warning lamps on or had other problems.

Driving the wrong way on roundabouts attracts one penalty point and a €60 fine or three points on conviction and a €90 fine.

He also said three testers were off work because they had been involved in collisions while testing. Crashes usually involved other drivers colliding with learners, but not always.

One woman had a heart attack and died while taking a test. The authority would be putting defibrillators into all testing centres because of the stress people experienced, he said.

Mr Brett said 27 fewer people had died in road crashes this year than the same time last year.

Also at yesterday’s committee, the National Roads Authority and the Department of Transport were criticised over the lack of service areas on motorways. Mr Fleming said it was “utterly unsafe” and service areas should have been planned with roads, “not as an afterthought”.

Committee chairman Bernard Allen TD complained he could drive from Cork to Dublin and find nowhere to answer the call of nature. It was a “massive error” not to have put in the service areas and the roads authority had been “grievously negligent”.

Hugh Cregan, head of public-private partnership at the roads authority, said when they began to build roads they had expected services would be provided at junctions by business, as was the practice abroad, but “unfortunately it didn’t happen”.

Tom O’Mahony, secretary general at the department, said they planned to introduce 12 service areas. Two had opened on the M1 at Lusk and Castlebellingham, and a third would open at Enfield on the M4 next week. Others were subject to financial constraints, he said.