Driving test applicants will have to wait up to 10 months to be examined - the longest delay since the Minister for Transport announced his crackdown on provisional licence holders last December.
Waiting times for tests have risen to an average of almost eight months in the 49 test centres across the State. However, two centres, Ballina and Navan, have now hit the 40-week mark.
Longford follows closely behind with a 39-week delay, while two of the five Dublin centres, Raheny and Rathgar, report waiting times of 38 weeks.
No test centre in the State can provide tests in less than six months.
Waiting times increased exponentially following Mr Brennan's announcement last December that he intended to end the practice which allowed a driver to fail a test and continue driving unaccompanied on a provisional licence.
The average wait at the start of December was less than 11 weeks, with some centres examining applicants in seven to eight weeks. Ballina and Naas had delays of nine weeks and 11 weeks respectively.
The Christmas period saw a massive influx of applications and, by January 6th, the average wait had increased to just over 18 weeks. Applicants in Ballina, home of the Department of Transport's driver testing office, had to wait 23 weeks. In Naas the waiting time had shot to 27 weeks.
Mr Brennan's promised measures to reduce the applications backlog - 130,000 are on the waiting list - have as yet failed to get off the ground. The 116 testers didn't sign up to a suggested bonus scheme for increasing the number of tests.
In February, Mr Brennan announced that retired testers could be brought back. However, while some former testers have been contacted, none has started work.
Plans to bring in testers from the UK were not implemented.
The current eight- to 10-month delays are due to the influx of applications in January, February and March this year, a senior official at the Department's Ballina office told The Irish Times.
"Back in October and November last year we had the waiting times down to about 10 weeks. People had a measure of expectation that they would get a test in a reasonable length of time; that's gone now."
Drivers coming to the end of their second provisional licence have been made particularly vulnerable by the delay.
As regulations stand, a driver on a second provisional licence who has not sat a test in the last two years must, in order to get a third provisional licence, provide proof of a forthcoming test date.
Those who cannot provide the date will not be granted a licence and will be put off the road.
However, the Department official said, test dates can only be issued six weeks in advance of the examination. "If you applied in January because your licence was due to run out at the end of the summer, you could find September coming around without having got a test date."
