Covid-19 had many knock-on impacts across public services in the country, but the Government will be familiar with one particular area where there was an impact, namely driving tests. Unfortunately, people are waiting an extremely long period to get driving tests across many areas of Munster. In places like Wilton, Mallow and Dungarvan, which are very important centres in my constituency of Cork East, it will be well into December and even January. What proactive measures are being taken by the Government to deal with this issue that, unfortunately, was caused by letting go driving testers who were on temporary contracts in August of this year? Will the Government undertake any action to deal with the issue? As a Deputy in a rural constituency, this is an extremely important issue for rural Ireland and it must be dealt with urgently.

I am very much aware of the problems people are facing. We need to get on top of it as it is impeding people from getting to college if they need to drive to college and getting to work if they need to drive to work and the situation is not at all acceptable. I know the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton, is working on the matter with the Road Safety Authority, RSA, which is trying to hire additional staff, which would help us to get through the backlog. We will get through it. A couple of months ago, if I was standing in the Dáil we would have been talking a lot about the backlog of people waiting for passports or work permits but with additional staff and automation we have managed to get on top of those delays and I assure the Deputy we will get on top of this one too.