THE Irish Road Haulage Association (IRHA) says the number of learner drivers in Limerick is a “crisis”, with over 15,000 on the road since September 2025.
New figures released by the Irish Road Safety Authority (RSA) show that there are now 394,128 learner permit holders across the country, an increase of over 12,000 since March 2025.
There were 14,966 learner drivers on Limerick roads at the end of March, with the figure shooting up to 15,534 since the end of September, marking an increase of 568 drivers.
Ger Hyland, president of the IRHA said “the levels of inexperienced drivers on our roads beggars belief at a time when millions of taxpayers money is being pumped into the RSA to clear a chronic backlog of driver testing across licence categories”.
The majority of learner permit holders in Limerick are aged between 17 and 20 (3,667) and 30 and 39 (3,883).
18 learner permit holders are over the age of 80 while 103 individuals are between the ages of 70 and 79, according to the latest RSA figures.
Mr Hyland believes the surge in learner drivers on local roads poses a direct threat to Irish road safety.
“To have 394,128 inexperienced drivers on our roads is a testament to the failure of the Road Safety Authority and their mismanagement of our driver testing system. It is a mess and not getting any better, despite all the creative accounting that the RSA are doing with driver testing figures,” he said.
Gardaà issued 2,754 fixed charge notices during the first three months of 2025 to learner drivers who were caught driving without being accompanied by a fully licensed driver, an increase of 9.5 per cent on the same period in 2025.
“The RSA don’t have a handle on what is a crisis for Irish road safety”, Mr Hyland hit out.
“How are we supposed to accept that around 10 per cent of Ireland’s driving public are on some kind of learner permit? We have been asking questions of the RSA for the past 12 months on behalf of our members and the driving public. The RSA have ducked, dived, and dodged accountability and transparency and it is high time that they are called to task.”