Minister drove up a cul-de-sac

IT may be unfair to blame a specific minister for a new problem, as the backlog for driving tests has been around for over a quarter of a century.

Still, the Government seems incapable of resolving the issue.

The Civil Service Arbitration Board yesterday shot down plans by Transport Minister Martin Cullen to outsource driver testing to private companies, as part of his department's efforts to clear the backlog of 130,000 people waiting for driving tests.

It had been planned to outsource 40,000 tests to private companies.

The Civil and Pubic Service Union and the Federated Union of Government Employees objected in principle to the outsourcing of the core work of civil servants, on the grounds that this violated the terms of the social partnership agreement, Sustaining Progress.

The IMPACT trade union proposed that contract staff be recruited, trained and properly supervised so that the integrity of the driving test would not be compromised, as the state would still be in control of the testing process.

The arbitration board's ruling is binding on the Department of Transport. IMPACT had also proposed as an alternative to privatisation the deployment of surplus civil servants, but Mr Cullen was determined to take his own route, which turned out to be another cul-de-sac.

He should have listened to the union. This is more than just another example of administrative bungling within the civil service. The issue at stake involves the carnage on our roads, which has been causing considerable public uneasiness.

In other countries, the driving test issue is essentially divorced from road safety, due to severe restrictions on those driving with provisional licences, but, in this country, a person who fails a test can get back into a car, or hop on a motorbike, and drive away from the test centre.

It is appalling that some 380,000 drivers on our roads have never passed a driving test.

Many people may remember when the government was faced with a similar problem in 1979, the minister of the day announced that anybody who had two provisional driving licences, and was in possession of a current provisional licence, was entitled to purchase a full driving licence without taking a test.

At that time, around 60,000 people had applied to take a driving test and about 160,000 people had a current provisional driving licence.

As a result, it was estimated that between 15,000 and 20,000 people managed to purchase a full driving licence even though they had already failed a test, while others were instantly licensed after failing the test more than once.

The Government's current approach to road safety is a shambles, with one fiasco after another. The delay in introducing legislation to prosecute those holding a mobile phone while driving is one example, and the mess surrounding the introduction of new penalty points is another.

The existing penalty points system, meanwhile, is not being properly implemented.

Almost 90% or road accidents are attributable to driver behaviour, and many of those are the result of driver incompetence. A proper testing regime is unlikely to eliminate many of those problems, but it should help. After more than a quarter of a century, it is time that the Government and civil service solved this problem.