The Road Safety Authority says it hopes to clear the backlog in driver theory tests by September.
More than 120,000 people are currently waiting to take the test after centres closed due to the pandemic.
Of these, 2,013 are awaiting an invite in Carlow where 38 have a test in hand for the coming weeks while 702 have been deemed ineligible (this is typically because the candidate has not completed mandatory Essential Driver Training (EDT) programme). In Kilkenny the overall figure’s 1,737 with 187 slated for a test soon and 516 not eligible.
However, today marks the reopening of those centres for in-person theory tests, in line with the easing of restrictions.
RSA spokesperson, Brian Farrell, says capacity will be limited to begin, noting “There’s a cap of 25,000 driver theory tests that we can conduct in the test centres per month and we’re hoping in time the Government will permit us to increase the number of theory tests to 50,000 per month and we’re quite confident that being able to ramp up to that level of capacity will go a long way towards eliminating the estimated backlog”.
