We have a problem. There are 71,554 people waiting for a driving test nationally and 4,853 are waiting in County Kerry alone. The average waiting time for a test is 30 weeks. Killarney has the second highest in the State at 43 weeks and it is 32 weeks in Tralee. I am absolutely inundated with emails and phone calls from students, young people starting out, their parents, grandparents, aunties and uncles. These are people who want to work, to go to school or college and they need a licence. They need to get on the road. We need to give them a chance. It seems impossible to get on top of this list. Some Members might not be old enough to remember but there was a time, which I remember my late mother talking about, when there was an amnesty for drivers licences and people were literally given a driver's licence.

I am sure you were around yourself at the time.

No, I was not. I have been around a while but not that long.

Time is up anyway, Deputy. Thank you.

On a serious note, it is not just me. Each Member of the House has been inundated with this.

I am pleading with the Taoiseach. A Cheann Comhairle, you know it yourself. You have it in your constituency.

Time is up.

We need to get to the bottom of this and we need to get young people on the road with their drivers' licences.

We will get the Deputy an answer.

There has been a big increase in demand for driving tests. Some of that is related to a snap-back in demand since Covid but most of it is down to a rising population, more people working and more people driving to college and education as the Deputy pointed out in his contribution. I know from the Minister of State, Deputy Chambers, that more driver testers have been hired. It is expected that once they are all up and running we will start to see that waiting list come down as it did for passports and work permits in the past. It is something we are actively working on. For reasons of road safety we do not have any plans to have an amnesty.