Over 1,000 people are waiting for a driving test in Waterford.
According to freedom of information figures released to Newstalk, nearly 58,000 people nationally are on the waiting list for a driving test, due to Covid-related backlogs.
There are over 92,500 driving test applications in the Road Safety Authority's system at the moment.
Over 10,000 of these have a scheduled appointment.
Another 24,500 applications have been deemed ineligible - normally because the drivers haven't taken enough lessons.
The other 57,600 are eligible for a test but are on the waiting list.
That includes over 7,000 in the centre in Tallaght in Dublin - which is the longest list in the country.
Brian Farrell, from the Road Safety Authority, says the Covid pandemic is to blame for the long backlogs and they were making progress:
"It's important to remind people that we have been able to conduct driving tests at a time when across most of Europe the driving test service was suspended. We conducted over 120,00 driving tests to date in 2021.
"We're hoping to be in a situation where we're at a national average waiting time of 12 weeks in February next year, and that will go someway toward providing driving tests within a reasonable period. At the height of the closure of the service, we were telling people to expect a waiting time of six months or more, so we are making progress."
In all, 15 centres have over 1,000 on their waiting list - they include venues in Carlow, Cork, Galway, Kildare, Limerick, Louth and Meath.
