The number of unqualified drivers on Irish roads is increasing rapidly, despite Government measures to reduce driving-test waiting times.
According to the Department of Environment and Local Government, there were 380,000 provisional licence-holders at December 31st, 1999, 43,000 more than in July 1998 when the Government launched its four-year strategy on road safety.
The 13 per cent increase has been mirrored by the rise in the number of full licence-holders from 1.4 million to 1.58 million. As a result, the ratio of fully-licensed to unqualified drivers has been maintained at four to one.
Commenting on the figures, the chief executive of the Driving Instructors Register (DIR), Mr Des Cummins, said they highlighted a need for greater urgency in the implementation of the Government's Strategy for Road Safety 1998-2002.
He said Ireland was the only country in Europe which had no mandatory register for driving instructors, which was to have been introduced at the beginning of this year but has been postponed until 2002.
Ireland was also the only EU member-state which allowed provisional licence-holders to drive unaccompanied.
As regards the register, the Department should be more proactive in promoting the register among instructors and the public, he said.
Up to 650 of the 1,200 full-time instructors in the State have been registered with the DIR, which is part-funded by the Department and the Irish Insurance Federation. Hundreds more part-time instructors, however, are believed to operate on the black market.
Among the other Government initiatives behind schedule is the introduction of a theory test for provisional and fully-licensed drivers. Originally planned for December 1998, it will not now become effective until mid-2001 at the earliest.
However, Mr Cummins conceded that while such a test would ensure provisional drivers had a basic knowledge of the rules of the road before sitting behind the wheel, it would not eliminate the anomaly that provisional licence-holders who failed the driving test were "allowed to get back into their cars and drive out of the test centre unaccompanied".
He said the waiting lists at test centres were still as bad as ever, despite an increase in the number of testers to 106 and a reduction in the average waiting time in the State to 21 weeks.
In opening testing centres at Raheny and Tallaght in Dublin to take pressure off neighbouring centres such as Finglas and Orwell Road, he said, all the Department had achieved was "spreading one centre's waiting list to another".
Most worryingly, he said, the driving-test failure rate remained high at around 50 per cent. "If we had a similar failure rate in the Leaving Cert there would be a national outcry."
He said: "It all comes back to education. They are learning from the thousands of people who got licences under the amnesty [in 1979] and who are now in their 40s and 50s and teaching their kids to pull up the clutch and not to worry about anyone else on the road.
"We have to instil in the public that a driving licence is not a right, it's a privilege."
His views were echoed by Ms Gertie Shields, founder of Mothers Against Drink Driving, who said the Government had paid "lip-service" to road safety.
"Appealing to people's good nature, as the Safety Council has been doing, has been shown to be a failure. It is time for people to get tough, and that means the Government, people on the bench, the judges, the gardai."
She said that when her daughter, Paula, died in a collision involving a drunken driver 17 years ago, "I was told it was an act of God. That has always been our attitude here, to pass the buck. When are people going to start taking responsibility?"
The Irish Insurance Federation welcomed the Government's plans to introduce a penalty points system, as yet without a target start-up date, but said measures were needed as a matter of urgency to reduce the number of provisional licence-holders.
Meanwhile, Fine Gael's deputy leader, Mrs Nora Owen, has called for an examination of the safety regulations relating to the roadworthiness of heavy vehicles. She said she had written to the Minister of State with responsibility for road traffic laws, Mr Robert Molloy, following the death last week of a young local authority worker on the airport road in Dublin after a loose wheel came off a truck.
"I have learned that some trucks using Irish roads have their wheels bolted on in a way that they can become loose during driving," said Mrs Owen. "I understand the circumstances of the accident are still being investigated and I will be following up the matter with the suppliers of heavy vehicles to ascertain the safety of trucks on Irish roads."
