The trade union that represents driving testers has said the large number of cancellations since the introduction of new requirements regarding proof that drivers have valid insurance confirms the scale of the issue.
The Road Safety Authority (RSA) confirmed on Thursday that some 1,200 tests had been cancelled since March 9th, when a requirement that drivers provide a certificate of insurance before they sit their test was introduced.
The testers had voted for industrial actions over concerns they would not be covered in the event of a collision if a driver turned out to be uninsured.
The rate of cancellations, however, reduced from 11 per cent to about 7 per cent on Wednesday following a meeting between the RSA and Fórsa, with the union agreeing digital certificates would be accepted. The RSA said it hoped there would be a further reduction over the coming days.
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Before the new requirements were introduced this month, a driver arriving to sit a test had to have a valid insurance disc displayed on the windscreen of their car and they were required to sign a declaration that they were insured. The union did not believe this represented a satisfactory level of proof and 95 per cent of testers who participated in a ballot on the issue backed a proposal for industrial action.
In a statement on Thursday the union said “the high number of cancellations illustrates the extent of the problem with uninsured vehicles that were presenting for driving tests. That problem is further illustrated by the fact that 19,673 vehicles were seized by gardaí last year for being driven without insurance”.
“Fórsa is continuing to work with management to implement the new and agreed protocols successfully.”
It said the changes introduced on March 9th “were agreed in the interests of workplace and public safety”.
The RSA said the original issue regarding cover has since been “unambiguously clarified” and testers would always have been covered in the event of an accident. It said it hoped the rate of cancellation would continue to decrease as people became used to the new requirements and engagement between it and testers continued.
Speaking on Morning Ireland, RSA chief operations officer Brendan Walsh said the authority was “working tirelessly” to accommodate, as soon as possible, those turned away from tests because they could not provide proof of insurance. In some cases, he said, people were being accommodated within two days.
Walsh said the original issue had arisen because “there was an assumption they [the testers] were getting into vehicles with customers who may not be insured despite displaying an insurance disc in the actual window”.
“The reality is, as part of our engagement process with the union and also subsequently with the umbrella organisation, the MIBI , of the insurance companies in Ireland, we are satisfied they are fully insured, regardless if they’re sitting in a vehicle with somebody who is not insured.”
Testers would be fully covered by the MIBI in the event of any incident involving a learner driving during their test, even if they were driving an uninsured vehicle, he said. “So any damages that they would incur personally, from their perspective, they would be 100 per cent covered. The matter then would differ between the uninsured driver and the person they’ve hit.”
Reacting to those comments, the union said “there was an issue and our members were right to raise it. The numbers show that.”
A spokesperson for the RSA said “we are happy the situation is improving, there are lots of conversations going on and we are very close to a resolution”.
