There is just one driving tester working in Roscommon and Leitrim as more than 45,000 people around the country continue to wait for a driving test.

The revelation is contained in Road Safety Authority (RSA) data response to a parliamentary question tabled to Transport Minister Shane Ross.

The figures reveal that there is no driving tester at all employed in Leitrim — despite there being an RSA test centre in Carrick-on-Shannon and 435 people currently waiting an average of over 14 weeks for a test in the county.

Neighbouring Roscommon has just one tester in the county working through a backlog of 331 people waiting an average of almost three months for a test.

The RSA figures show there are more than 45,000 people across the country waiting for a test. In some counties, the waiting time to sit a test is as long as four months.

Kilrush has the longest waiting time for a test in the country at 16.3 weeks with 118 people on the waiting list, followed by Newcastle West in Limerick (16.2 weeks/576 people), Skibbereen in Cork (15.7 weeks/599 people), Cork (15.4 weeks/4,040 people) and Clonmel in Tipperary (14.8 weeks/690 people).

The main population centres are also faring quite badly in terms of the numbers waiting for a test and the length of time they have to wait. For example, across all of Galway there are almost 1,000 people waiting an average of more than 10 weeks for a driving test.

In Tallaght in Dublin, there are 3,729 people waiting 10.4 weeks to sit a test, while in Finglas more than 4,000 people are waiting well over 10 weeks for a test.

Fianna Fáil TD for Roscommon/Galway Eugene Murphy, who tabled the parliamentary question, said the figures are alarming and labelled the lack of any driving tester at all for Leitrim as “simply not good enough”.

In response to my parliamentary question the Road Safety Authority outlined that they will review the need to headquarter a driver tester in Carrick-on-Shannon and I am calling on Minister Ross to appoint a driver tester in Co Leitrim.

“There is also only one driver tester in Co Roscommon where people are waiting up to three months for a test so there is a need for an additional driver tester in the county,” he said.

The RSA explained that driving testers are not headquartered at every test centre: “Driver testers are deployed from a national pool of testers to meet the demand in every test centre. There is currently no driver tester headquartered in Carrick on Shannon. Carrick on Shannon is serviced by other driver testers based within that region with testers rostered there on a regular basis.”