The Government has approved the recruitment of an additional 75 driver testers by the Road Safety Authority to address the current backlog in the Driver Testing Service.
Once completed, it will bring the total number of testers to over 200.
The new hiring is in addition to the 30 extra testers who were previously sanctioned in July 2022 and have been fully deployed since end of last month.
The testers will be recruited through open competition.
The Department of Transport said it was expected that new testers would be trained and ready to work from October of this year.
"With these new testers in place, customers will see improvements in their waiting times and the RSA expect the backlog of applicants to be returned to target customer service levels by the end of the first quarter of 2024," Ministers Eamon Ryan and Jack Chambers said in a statement.
The recruitment campaign is open from today.
Difficulty recruiting NCT mechanics
Earlier, the Minister for State for Transport Jack Chambers said the long waiting times for an NCT had led to efforts to apply penalties to Applus, the company that runs the tests, "who are not adhering to the contract that we've provided and that people expect."
"The delays are completely unacceptable, so the contract mechanisms have been triggered by the Road Safety Authority with Applus, who are meant to provide the service and are meant to provide a 12-day average waiting time," the Minister told Morning Ireland.
"It's presently 30 (days), and as I've said, that is unacceptable. And we are moving though to with the road Safety Authority an additional 55 mechanics are being recruited. They should be in place by the end of this month. That will significantly increase capacity."
Mr Chambers said there has been some difficulty in recruiting mechanics.
"That's why the 55 they're being recruited are being recruited from outside the European Union.
"There's a European wide shortage of mechanics but for people waiting too long, they expect a proper service.
"Applus are contracted to provide that service and have haven't provided the level or standard of service that I expect as minister and that's why contract penalties are being applied and there's an engagement between the road Safety Authority and Applus and that in fact there's a dispute on the contract mechanisms."
The contract penalties are "essentially fines" and there's arbitration commencing between the Road Safety Authority and Applus, he explained.
