Navan has the longest waiting times in the country at the moment. Learners are waiting up to 33 weeks just to receive an appointment. Waits for retests can mean anything up to six or seven months. Is that acceptable to the Minister of State? It is certainly not acceptable to the thousands of young people in my county who are desperate for a driver's licence so they can go about their business. As of April last year, there were 5,305 individuals on that waiting list. It was an incredibly high figure and the reason is quite obvious. There is a shortage of testers able to actually go through those tests to reduce the numbers. In the whole of Meath there are three testers currently. This is an incredible figure. I would like it if the Minister of State could maybe pay less attention to his notes and a bit more to the debate that is actually happening here, if that is alright.
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Three testers can only-----
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Excuse me, please.
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Do not be getting annoyed now.
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The Minister of State is a good man to heckle but it is good to listen too. This is why you have two ears and one mouth-----
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-----so you can listen to twice as much as you speak.
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If the Department only employs three testers for the whole of Meath this means that at best each tester can get through 40 tests a week and 120 is a total that the county can achieve. If they are doing it at a rate of 120 a week it will take 40 weeks just to get through the existing waiting list never mind the number of people who will join that waiting list in the interim. That is an incredible statistic. I believe the Government has caused some of the difficulty here. First of all, like many aspects of modern society the delivery of services is grinding to a halt. Why? It is because this Government will not pay proper pay and terms and conditions to workers within the public sector. If the Government will not pay people, and especially when there are extremely high rents, then people are not going to be able to do the job and they will leave the country and do the job elsewhere. Also, the Government has gotten rid of temporary testers in recent times, which is a good policy in the long term but it has had a destabilising effect in the short term. It has actually reduced the number of people working in the area as well. Another element is when a number of testers are pulled out of testing sites and they are moved on to other testing sites because perhaps they have competencies in another type of vehicle testing. This is causing instability within the testing centres as well, which is slowing the process down too. The Government has a system for cancellations whereby it invites young people to look at the websites to see what cancellations are happening on the testing. I know many young people who are on that website or the app all the time waiting for a cancellation so they can get in on it and still they cannot get a test for themselves. It is an incredible situation. This is having a significant effect on people's lives and especially young people. Many young people in Meath are living in areas where there is little or no public transport. The vast majority of people in County Meath - some 80,000 people - travel to work by car. We have been crying out for the rail line to be built between Navan and Dublin for at least 20 years and the Minister of State's Government has still not provided that. On one level the Government is refusing to deliver decent public transport to people and on the other level the Government is making it really difficult for people to get into their cars and drive to work. We have seen the increase in tolls and we have see the increase in excise on fuel. This is not just a philosophical question and it is not a theoretical question. These are real people trying to have real lives, trying to get to work, trying to study in college, and trying to live their lives. Currently Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in Government are damaging these people's lives because the Government will not provide the testers and will not provide the public transport.
Sentiment score: 0.04