Trust me, I'm a driving instructor

As student-teacher relationships go, this one was getting seriously informal. My tutor had just touched me for a £40 loan.

Had I been a little more alert, I might have perceived an earlier lapse in protocol, when I was asked for a further £25 VAT which my driving instructor had "forgotten" to include when taking my £150 in fees.

There followed a succession of late starts and postponements, either through the instructor being over-subscribed, or busy with a family commitment, buying new tyres, being let down by a plumber, etc. etc. etc.

Finally, after a 45-minute delay to one morning's lesson, and an afternoon wasted hanging around waiting to hear when and where I was to be given my next lesson and my £40 back, I finally snapped, got on the phone and told him I was discharging him and wanted whatever fees I was still credited for returned, along with the borrowed £40. Fortunately the £40 loan was a cheque I still had time to have stopped; but as for the fees. . .

"The law allows people like him to flaunt it, get out there, and rip people off," says Des Cummins, executive chairman of the Driving Instructor Register of Ireland Ltd (DIR). "You might well feel it worth writing off your loss just to get rid of him. It may cost you £150 to get £175 back, so at the end of the day you're going to feel it's not worth it. Members of the public have absolutely no redress with unregistered instructors, so these people get away with it. It's absolutely ludicrous."

It seems I'm not alone in falling victim to such questionable practices. "We've had a driving school set up in a rented house, working on a telephone answering machine, and people were ringing in for very cheap lessons, while the instructor was reporting to his answering machine three or four times a day, taking the names and addresses of them and selling them vouchers for lessons. After Christmas he wasn't there.

"Another driving school had set up - in a case something similar to yours, undertaking cheap lessons where the instructor used to ask all the students for a loan of some money. She "borrowed" £400 from a student the day before a test on the pretext that she couldn't get her cheque because the banks were closed, and she had to pay for insurance for the test. She was never seen again."

Today, Ireland is the only EU member state in which the training, examination, and registration of driving instructors remains purely voluntary. All anyone wishing to make money by giving driving lessons needs is a car, a full driving licence and a set of L-plates; like my erstwhile and unregistered instructor for instance.

This could cost the unwary client more than money. "There are a number of factors that would culminate in the high accident rate that we have in Ireland," says Des Cummins in his office in Glasnevin Hill, Dublin. "The first question that I would have to identify would be the correct impartation of the teaching syllabus. At the end of the day, what we're looking at here, and I think the Government now realises this, is that there is an idiosyncracy in the law that allows someone to go out there and teach what is a life skill, without proper training, or indeed examination." He adds: "Generally, if you take an advertisement in a classified directory, the bigger the advertisement the more impressive it looks to unsuspecting members of the public."

Established in 1996 after five years of research and development, which began in 1991 at the request of the then Minister for the Environment, the DIR draws from the board of the Motor Schools Association of Ireland and the Irish Driving Instructors Association of Ireland.

Instructors applying to register with the DIR are subject to an intensive three-part examination, followed by regular check testing in which DIR examiners accompany them on actual lessons and, where necessary, recall them for re-training. All registered instructors carry official DIR ID cards.

However well they may handle a car would not be enough in itself. Cummins says: "Being a good driver does not necessarily mean that you could be a good instructor. You could be a very good driver and still fail our exam, simply because you cannot impart your knowledge to your student." Currently, there are just under 450 DIR-registered instructors throughout the Republic, against an estimated 550 unknown quantities - many of whom may be bona fide, of course. If things go wrong there is little the DIR can do other than make personal representation on the pupil's behalf. However, complaint letters are being collated, and Des Cummins is hopeful that after June 1999, mandatory registration will be introduced by the Government.

The Department of the Environment, though concerned, appears unwilling to commit itself at this stage to making registration mandatory. In a statement issued through the Department's press office, Minister of State Robert Molloy responds: "A voluntary scheme for registration of driving instructors has been established with two national associations. The scheme aims to raise the standard of driving instruction and by extension the standard of driving generally, and provide for reduced car insurance premiums for drivers, including young drivers, who complete a course of instruction with a qualified instructor. It will be appropriate to monitor the progress of this scheme for a period of time before contemplating any more formal regulation of driving instruction."

Information on where to find your local DIR-registered driving instructor is available on (01) 8570377.