Driving schools and instructors in Ireland

Anyone charging you for driving lessons in Ireland must be an Approved Driving Instructor holding a valid ADI permit. There is no grey area and no informal tier. If they are taking money for tuition and they are not an ADI, they are not entitled to be doing it.

The register is public. Search it at rsa.ie.

How to search it

You can filter by licence category and by county, or type a name, a driving school name or an ADI number straight into the box. Every entry shows the instructor’s name, the school they trade under, their ADI number, their address and contact details, the licence categories they are approved for, and the counties they cover.

The ADI number is the useful part. Ask for it before you book, then check that the number and the name match what the register says. An instructor who is reluctant to give you a number is telling you something.

Licence categories matter

An ADI is approved for specific categories, not for driving in general.

• B is cars, which is what most learners want
• A, A1 and A2 are motorcycles
• C and CE are trucks and truck with trailer
• D is buses

An instructor approved for category B is not thereby approved to teach you on a truck. The register lists the categories against each name, so this is easy to confirm and easy to get wrong if you do not look.

EDT is not the same as lessons

Essential Driver Training is a mandatory programme of twelve sessions for learner car drivers, and it has to be delivered by an ADI who logs each session. That logging is the bit that matters: your EDT record is held centrally and the driving test appointment depends on it being complete.

Instructors delivering EDT are marked as such in the register. You can check your own logged sessions through the RSA’s MyEDT portal rather than relying on your instructor’s word or a paper logbook.

Lessons beyond the twelve EDT sessions are ordinary tuition. Still an ADI, still chargeable, but not part of the mandatory programme.

Motorcycles and professional driving

Motorcyclists need Initial Basic Training before riding on a public road, and IBT is delivered by a separately approved IBT instructor. The RSA keeps a register for those as well.

Drivers going for a Certificate of Professional Competence need RSA approved trainers at RSA approved training centres, which is a third approval again. Both the trainer and the centre have to be approved, and checking only one of them is a common mistake.

The quality mark is a separate thing

Some entries in the register carry a quality assured mark. That is an additional voluntary standard, not the legal requirement. An instructor without it is still fully entitled to teach. Do not read its absence as a warning.

What the register will not tell you

It will not tell you whether someone is a good teacher, and it says nothing about pass rates, patience or whether their car has dual controls you are comfortable with. Registration means they are permitted to instruct. Everything else is a conversation and a first lesson.

Checked July 2026. Registers move and bodies get renamed. If a link here is dead, the register almost certainly still exists somewhere else on the same organisation's site.