Laois man at helm of hauliers assoication seeks removal of driver testing from RSA

The Laois man at the head of the Irish Road Haulage Association claims the RSA is massaging its figures by moving commercial vehicle testers to car testing. 

The Irish Road Haulage Association(IRHA) accused the Road Safety Authority(RSA) of massaging the driver testing figures by moving testers from articulated truck, bus and truck testing to car testing in order to reduce wait times for car driving tests – whilst waiting times for commercial driving tests increase exponentially.  They made their claims in separate letters to both Ministers Darragh O’Brien and Sean Canney.

Hauliers say that this has caused the waiting lists for driving tests for a car to fall by 10% between April and June 2025 but led to a significant increase in the wait times for truck (42%)  and articulated truck (40%) between April and June 2025. It has also, they say,  caused a backlog in the testing of bus drivers. Hauliers describe it as a crisis in the making for the commercial driving industry.

According to IRHA President Ger Hyland, the RSA took the decision, under intense political pressure, to move their testing resources from commercial testing into car testing, rather than expand their testing capabilities overall. Mr Hyland described it as a dangerous game the RSA are playing which is effectively robbing Peter to pay Paul at a time when the haulage sector is desperately short on drivers.

He said the actions of the RSA are stifling economic growth in rural Ireland by delaying the qualification of suitably qualified professional drivers who are desperately needed to support small and medium sized businesses across the country.

“Young Irish drivers who need a license to drive a bus, truck or HGV cannot get licenses because the RSA have all but stopped commercial testing to focus on car testing. They have pulled the wool over this government's eyes and instead of dealing with the high demand for testing, they decided to simply move the deck chairs around the Titanic.”

The Road Safety Authority said they had redeployed staff in order to train new testers but only after delivering record numbers of truck and bus tests in May of 2025.  

"The Road Safety Authority (RSA) remains fully committed to delivering fair and timely access to driving tests across all licence categories — including commercial vehicles.

In May 2025, we delivered record levels of Category C and D (truck and bus) tests in preparation for the release of our experienced staff from the service to support the training of our new recruits. This resulted in a reduction of testing staff to support the higher licence categories during the training period in June and July,” the RSA stated. 

According to the RSA, “this short-term adjustment is already delivering improvements in overall capacity. Once the new testers are fully deployed from early September, waiting times for all licence categories — including commercial — will stabilise and meet service-level agreements.” 

“At the end of June, 2,738 people were awaiting a truck or bus driving test. These individuals will be issued with an invitation in the coming weeks. There will be no reduction in testing for the higher categories in 2025 vs 2024, we expect to exceed our 2024 testing volumes,” the RSA stated.  

They noted that in recent months, the IRHA expressed concern about long waiting times for car driving tests, warning of the 'safety risks' that delays were contributing to potentially more unaccompanied learner drivers sharing the road with professional HGV drivers. They say addressing that issue has been a national priority.

“The RSA’s focus is on providing a high-capacity, sustainable and safety-led testing system that serves all road users — commercial and private — and supports Ireland’s broader economic and workforce needs," they concluded.

Mr Hyland said driving school owners have said commercial driving testing has “all but stopped" in the last two months. 

“That means no new bus drivers, truck drivers, HGV drivers. We have young Irish people who want to drive for a living but cannot get a license so we are forced to bring in drivers from South Africa instead whilst young Irish people are forced to move abroad and drive there – all because of the mismanagement of our testing system by the RSA. One HGV driving instructor in Kerry told us that he didn’t have a scheduled commercial driving test in the Tralee centre since May and wasn’t expecting one until at least August. He told of the devastating impact this was having on his business and how he had young drivers waiting since January for a commercial driving test to try and get a job,” said Mr Hyland. 

Citing Central Statistics Office figures, Mr Hyland said that between April 2025 and June 2025, the RSA had significantly improved their performance for car and van testing, recording a 10% drop in the number of driving test applicants waiting at month end for a test. Over the same period, the number of applicants waiting for an articulated truck license test rose by 39.6% and the number of applicants waiting at month end for a category C truck license driving test rose by 42%, rising from 907 people waiting at the end of April 2025, to 1,289 people waiting for a truck driving test at the end of June 2025. 

The CSO figures also show that the ‘driving test applicants scheduled’ for cars/light vans between April and June 2025 increased by 49.2% from 15,287 tests to 22,810 scheduled tests. In the same period the number of scheduled tests for category C trucks fell by 61.8% from 356 to 136 scheduled tests and those for articulated trucks (CE license) fell by 69% from 242 tests scheduled in April 2025 to just 75 tests scheduled in June 2025.

Mr Hyland said “that period coincides with a period where Minister Séan Canney met with the Road Safety Authority (RSA) leadership in the Department of Transport and gave them a deadline to return in two weeks with sustainable proposals to improve driving test wait times.”

He said “the RSA know that the car testing figures are what will garner more media and political focus. That is why they moved their resources there, at the expense of the commercial driving sector. They just moved the driving test crisis from cars to commercial vehicles,  leading to severe backlogs in the testing system for bus, HGV and truck drivers. These are the drivers we need to bring tourists around, deliver goods and keep our economy running. The RSA have learned nothing in the past six months and have demonstrated that their organisation is clearly not fit for purpose.”

READ ALSO: Laois farmers urged to prevent family tragedies

“The Irish Road Haulage Association have now called on the Minister to remove the driver testing system from the Road Safety Authority, before any more damage to the Irish economy is done,” he concluded. 

The Leinster Express/Laois Live has contacted the RSA for comment.