{"id":271486,"date":"2026-01-07T03:40:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T03:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/271486\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T03:40:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T03:40:08","slug":"driving-testers-vote-in-favour-of-industrial-action-over-insurance-concerns-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/271486\/","title":{"rendered":"Driving testers vote in favour of industrial action over insurance concerns \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Driving testers have voted overwhelmingly for industrial action in a row with the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/road-safety-authority\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/road-safety-authority\/\">Road Safety Authority<\/a> (RSA) over insurance indemnity. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Members of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/forsa\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/forsa\/\">F\u00f3rsa<\/a> trade union voted by 95 per cent in favour of industrial action, based on a voter turnout of 83 per cent. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The vote comes as F\u00f3rsa representatives are due to attend talks with the RSA at the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/workplace-relations-commission\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/workplace-relations-commission\/\">Workplace Relations Commission<\/a> (WRC) on Tuesday, January 20th. The talks follow a joint referral made by the parties in December.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">It follows a drop in current car driving test waiting times from about 16 weeks in mid-2024 towards the RSA\u2019s target of 10 weeks. However higher demand in more populous areas have seen longer waiting times for tests. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Should industrial action go ahead it could have a detrimental effect on waiting times.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">On Tuesday, F\u00f3rsa accused the RSA of \u201cfailure to ensure that driver testers are fully and unconditionally covered by the State Claims Agency while carrying out their duties\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">In addition, F\u00f3rsa said the insurance verification system leaves driver testers at risk when carrying out their work. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The union said that at present there was \u201cno way to verify whether vehicles presented for driving tests are fully insured, and therefore driver testers are may not be fully indemnified\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">In a response, the RSA said it could confirm that driver testers were \u201cfully indemnified whilst carrying out their duties as public servants\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">It said while it noted the outcome of the recent ballot of its driver tester staff members, it \u201calso notes that there is a confirmed WRC hearing date to consider this matter in full and looks forward to engaging with staff representatives\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The Department of Transport said it welcomed the commitment from both parties to engage with the WRC, but declined to comment further. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Driving testers have voted overwhelmingly for industrial action in a row with the Road Safety Authority (RSA) over&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,13265,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,79877,7,8,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-271486","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-forsa","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latestnews","19":"tag-main-news","20":"tag-mainnews","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-road-safety-authority","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories","25":"tag-workplace-relations-commission"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115851744012266807","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}