Provisional licence crackdown is urged

THE Government has been urged to crackdown on provisional licence holders driving illegally.

Managing director of the Driving Instructor Register (DIR), Des Cummins said Transport Minister Seamus Brennan must end the ludicrous situation where only one in four drivers were actually qualified to drive.

Mr Cummins said EU citizens were now travelling to Ireland to do their driving test because driver training rules were far more relaxed and less costly.

“With the provisional licence anomalies, the role of the driving instructor is being demeaned to test tipping,” he said.

Under the Road Traffic (Licensing of Drivers) Regulations, 1989, drivers on their first, third and subsequent provisional licences - but not their second - must be accompanied by a qualified driver at all times. There is, however, scant regard to the law which is broken daily.

Mr Cummins said they wanted to see a situation where all learner drivers undertook some form of training before even going out on the road.

Last December, Transport Minister, Seamus Brennan, expressed his desire to close the loophole allowing motorists on their second provisional licence to drive unsupervised.

His declaration caused a rush of people to apply to do their driving test. The number of people waiting to do their test actually doubled to around 130,000.

A spokesperson for the minister said Mr Brennan was awaiting a package of reforms, drawn up at his request, that will address the controversial issue of how long a person can drive on a provisional licence.

Currently, around 300,000 people are driving on Irish roads with a provisional licence, compared to 1.4 million with a full licence.

The spokesperson said part of the reform package will include a strategy to increase the number of driving tests from about 200,000 a year to around 240,000 a year.

According to the Motor Schools Association people are having to wait up to nine months to be tested.

The Department of Transport wants to have a driver instruction accreditation body in place by the year end.

Mr Cummins said DIR is ideally placed to become the sole accreditation body, with three out ever four driving instructors on their data base.