Ireland Learner Permit Application (NDLS)

This file is the source-review record for this document version, per the manual-source-review-v1 practice. It documents the provenance of the published fields and flow and states the current verification claim honestly.

Current claim

• status: draft
• verification.method: manual-source-review-v1
• verification.lastVerifiedAt: 2026-07-07

Every field was read directly from the text layer of NDLS's own "Application Form for a Learner Permit" (D201, March 2020 edition), cross-checked against the RSA's own current "Apply for your first permit" guidance page for the channel structure, current fee, and several conditional-document triggers not stated on the (older) D201 PDF itself. It remains draft, not verified, pending a second independent reviewer's field-by-field pass and/or live-app execution testing — see "Path to a verified claim" below.

Why this candidate

This GovSchema Standard Research cycle (GOV-1533) began by regenerating the picture in CATALOG.md: as of 2026-07-06, DMV, Taxes, and (effectively) every other vertical stood at or near 17/17 jurisdictions, with the remaining open candidates mostly being either confirmed dead ends (NL/ZA/BR Visa) or UAE-specific gaps already screened as weak (Passport: only a menu-tile/ checklist-level source found in two prior cycles; Business Formation: login/WAF-gated across every UAE agency checked).

This cycle first re-attempted the UAE Passport gap directly, since the prior cycle's own note (ae/icp/emirates-id-replacement's VERIFICATION.md) left it as "a future cycle should do a deeper page-by-page pass ... before giving up on it." A full re-read of both the 72-page citizen-category and 57-page resident-category ICP Smart App manuals (this time recovering genuine prose text via pdfjs-dist's standard-font text layer, not just embedded screenshots) confirmed the manuals' own "Replace"/generic-service wizard narrative — passport fields appear only inside the already-modelled Replace Emirates ID flow's own Passport Information screen, never as a distinct issuance/renewal wizard. A second, 230-page ICP "Guide for Services" (Service Card) PDF was also read in full: pp.18-22 give "Issuance of Passport" and "Renewal of A Passport" their own dedicated service cards, but — as the prior cycle found for the Emirates ID service cards — these are checklist/ conditions/fee-schedule prose ("Filling in the application form (as applicable)"), not a field-by-field form. UAE Passport remains open but weak; not picked this cycle (see "Confirmed re-screened, not re-attempted" in CATALOG.md, to be updated).

The cycle then pivoted to a gap CATALOG.md's own "Known Gaps" section explicitly names as "genuinely open, well-sourced": sub-national/state DMV expansion, specifically a first-time driving-licence/learner-permit application, absent from every jurisdiction this registry already covers in some form except a handful. Re-reading ie/dttas/driving-licence-renewal's own description confirmed it explicitly excludes "a first-time driving licence, adding or exchanging a category" as a distinct NDLS service — a clean, disclosed, and until now unfilled gap for a jurisdiction (Ireland) already deeply covered elsewhere in this registry. Searching NDLS's own site found the D201 "Application Form for a Learner Permit" — a genuine, directly downloadable, text-layer PDF whose own Part 2 "Application type" field lists "First time learner permit application" as its first option — exactly the missing pathway. Picked this cycle.

Access constraint and how it was worked around

ndls.ie and rsa.ie both return HTTP 403 to direct automated requests (reconfirmed this cycle, consistent with ie/dttas/driving-licence-renewal's own prior finding), while the underlying PDF and HTML files themselves are genuinely public with no login/CAPTCHA/WAF gate on their own hosting. Every source below was retrieved through a Wayback Machine snapshot (web.archive.org), the same pattern already established by gov-au-wayback-workaround and used throughout this registry's IE documents: a cheap curl "http://archive.org/wayback/available?url=<path>" check to find the closest snapshot, followed by a direct curl of the returned web.archive.org/web/<timestamp>/... URL. All snapshots resolved on the first attempt and returned full, current-looking content (not a bot-challenge page).

Sources examined

• Document (id, version): ie/dttas/learner-permit-application / 1.0.0
• Spec version: GovSchema 0.3.0
• Authority: Road Safety Authority (RSA), National Driver Licence Service (NDLS)
• Primary source URL: https://www.ndls.ie/images/Documents/LearnerPermits/D201_Learner_Permit_app_form.pdf (retrieved via web.archive.org/web/20250429002403/...) — "Application Form for a Learner Permit D201", March 2020 edition, 4 pages, genuine text layer (confirmed via pdfjs-dist getTextContent(), no scanned images).
• Secondary/corroborating sources (all retrieved via Wayback):
  • https://www.ndls.ie/how-to-apply/forms-reports.html (web.archive.org/web/20251115030407/...) — NDLS's own current forms listing, confirming "Application and Guidance Notes for Learner Permit D201" remains the live, current form as of this 2025-11-15 snapshot (no newer edition superseding March 2020 was found at this or any other URL checked this cycle).
  • https://www.rsa.ie/services/learner-drivers/learner-permit/apply-for-your-first-permit (web.archive.org/web/20251112132554/...) — the RSA's current "Apply for your first permit" guidance page: confirms the two application channels (online via PSC/MyGovID, no paper form; in-person at an NDLS centre using the paper form), the current application fee (EUR 45.00, up from EUR 35.00 effective 2025-01-01 per a ndls.ie news-page search snippet not independently fetched — see judgment call 4), the age-70 fee exemption, and several document requirements (proof of address, proof of residency, eyesight/medical report "if applicable") not themselves stated on the 2020-dated D201 PDF.
  • https://www.ndls.ie/images/Documents/Forms/171315_NDLS_FULL_LICENCE_AppForm_JAN_2022_WEB_HR.pdf (D401, "Application Form for a Driving Licence", January 2022 edition) — fetched and read for comparison/disambiguation only (confirms D401 and D201 are structurally parallel sibling forms covering, respectively, the full-licence and learner-permit tracks); not used as a field source for this document.

What was confirmed directly (verbatim, from the PDF's own text layer)

The D201 form's own five parts, read via pdfjs-dist's standard text extraction (no image rendering needed — this PDF, unlike several other documents in this registry, carries a genuine, fully recoverable text layer):

• Part 1: Personal Details (p.1, Q1-12): prior learner permit/licence-in-Ireland check, driver number, title, first name, surname (as on birth certificate), full name for the permit, surname-change reason and previous names, address (4 lines + Eircode), date of birth, gender, PPS number, place of birth, mobile/landline/email.
• Part 2: Learner Permit Details (p.2, Q13-16): a 7-value + "Other" application-type selector (first-time, renewal, add/remove category, personal-detail change, replace lost/stolen, replace damaged, category upgrade for existing full-licence holders), an optional disqualification- period sub-block, a licence-category selector (a repeated Group 1/Group 2 category table — AM, A1, A2, A, B, BE, W, C1, C, C1E, CE, D1, D, D1E, DE — identical to the category list already confirmed by ie/dttas/driving-licence-renewal's own includesGroup2Category field), a foreign-licence-on-receipt question, and (for the lost/stolen pathway) a declaration-plus-Garda-certification block.
• Part 3: Organ Donation (p.2, Q17): a single opt-in code-115 checkbox.
• Part 4: Driver Fitness (p.3, Q18-40): an eyesight/lenses question, then 21 individually numbered Yes/No medical-condition questions (Q19-Q39) plus a 3-part arms/legs restriction question (Q40(a)/(b)/(c)) — each read and modelled as its own boolean field, at the same granularity the source form itself uses (each is its own numbered checkbox pair).
• Part 5: Declaration by Applicant (p.3, Q41): the Road Traffic Act 1961 s.22A/s.115 declaration, signed and dated by the applicant.
• Application Checklist (p.4): the document list required for all applications, plus per-option additional items (see judgment calls 2-3 below for what was and wasn't folded into this v1.0.0's documents[]).

Judgment calls / scope cuts (read before reviewing)

1. Scoped to "First time learner permit application" (option 1) only. D201 is one shared form across seven application-type values. This document models every Part 1-5 field on the base form (all of which are presented regardless of which application type is selected) with proper requiredWhen gating where the form itself ties a field to a specific option (e.g. lostPermitDeclarationSigned/gardaCertificationObtained gated on replace_lost_or_stolen_permit). It does not fully scope out each of the other six options' own distinct additional-checklist requirements (e.g. option 5's name-change evidence, option 6's damaged- permit evidence, option 3's category-specific theory-certificate timing rule) — those are left unmodelled, the same discipline already used by ph/lto/drivers-license-application (which models its Type A pathway in full and leaves the other ten transaction types as a closed enum) and kr/koroad/driving-licence-application.
2. licenceCategory modelled as a single enum, not a repeating selection. The paper form's own category table allows ticking multiple categories in one application. No array/repeating-value type exists in this spec version (GSP-0009 remains undecided per SPEC.md §12) — this document follows the same single-value discipline already established by ie/dttas/driving-licence-renewal's includesGroup2Category field for the identical category list.
3. documents[] bounded to what's universal + directly confirmed for the first-time pathway. The D201 checklist's "for all applications" bullets (PPS-number evidence, photographic ID) and the RSA current page's first-time-specific bullets (address proof, conditional residency proof) are modelled. cpcEvidence (Certificate of Professional Competence, relevant to certain Group 2 professional-driving categories) is included per the D201 checklist but left with no requiredWhen gate, since neither source fetched this cycle states the precise triggering condition (the D201 checklist only says "if required, see page 3 of guidance notes" — a document not independently retrieved). A reviewer with access to the guidance notes should add the proper gate.
4. Current fee (EUR 45.00) sourced from the RSA page, not the D201 PDF. The 2020-dated D201 form's own checklist only says "Relevant fee (see page 2 of guidance notes)" — no amount. The EUR 45.00 figure (up from EUR 35.00) and the 2025-01-01 increase date come from the RSA current guidance page directly; the increase date itself is corroborated only by a search-result snippet referencing an ndls.ie news article ("Fee increases to take effect from 01 January 2025") that could not be independently fetched this cycle (no Wayback snapshot exists for that specific URL) — flagged here as the weakest-sourced single fact in this document. The RSA page's EUR 45.00 figure for the fee amount itself is directly confirmed twice (once for each channel) on that page, so is not equally in doubt.
5. previousNames left as a plain optional field, not requiredWhen-gated on surnameChangeReason. This spec's Condition grammar has no field-absence operator; gating an optional field's requiredness on whether a sibling optional field was filled in is the exact bug class documented in this registry's own notequals-empty-string-absent-field-bug precedent (an absent field evaluates as not-equal-to any concrete sentinel, misfiring as always-required). Left as a plain optional field with an explanatory description instead.
6. medicalReportRequired modelled as a declared boolean, not a computed one. Mirrors ie/dttas/driving-licence-renewal's own field of the same name: its true/false value depends on an OR across 22 upstream boolean answers plus the selected category, too large a set to express cleanly as a single Condition object, so — consistent with that sibling document's precedent — it is modelled as its own required field whose trigger logic is stated in its description, and medicalReportForm is requiredWhen gated on it directly.
7. Online-channel field parity assumed, not independently confirmed. The RSA page states the online channel needs "no paper forms" but still lists substantially the same underlying data requirements (theory test pass, category, address/residency proof, eyesight/medical report, fee) as the in-person channel; it does not itself enumerate personal-detail fields (name, DOB, PPSN, etc.), presumably because these are drawn from the applicant's already-verified PSC/MyGovID profile rather than re-typed. This document models the full Part 1-5 field set as the common underlying data model for both channels (the same choice already made by the sibling renewal document for its own online/in-person split) rather than asserting a channel-specific field subset that was not directly observed for the online wizard.
8. D401 (full driving licence) intentionally out of scope. Confirmed by direct comparison to be a distinct sibling form covering the post-test licence-issuance and renewal tracks, not learner-permit application; not modelled here.

Second-reviewer amendment (GOV-1536)

Independent re-verification (re-fetching D201 and the RSA page fresh via the same Wayback URLs, and re-extracting D201's text layer via pdfjs-dist) confirmed all field- and document-level sourceRefs against the actual source text, with one exception: medicalReportRequired's description originally stated the trigger included "or if aged 75 or over", copied from ie/dttas/driving-licence-renewal's field of the same name. That age-75 trigger does not appear anywhere in either source fetched for this document (confirmed via grep over both extracted texts — zero hits for "75"), and the sibling document's own version of that trigger is specific to its renewal/expiry-date context, which doesn't directly apply to a first-time application. The clause has been removed from the description (the Q19-40(c)/Group-2 portion, which is directly sourced from D201, is unaffected). This has no effect on validation/conformance, since medicalReportRequired is a declared (not computed) field and no requiredWhen/enum logic referenced the age-75 clause.

Every other field and document sourceRef in this schema was independently re-confirmed verbatim against the re-fetched D201 text layer and RSA page text during this pass.

What is NOT yet independently verified

• A second reviewer has not yet independently re-fetched and re-extracted the D201 PDF and RSA page to confirm every field's sourceRef against the actual source text.
• No newer D201 edition superseding March 2020 was found this cycle, but this was checked only against the current ndls.ie forms-listing page's Wayback snapshot, not a live crawl of ndls.ie itself (blocked, see above).
• Live-app/live-form execution testing (per this registry's structural-reference maturity convention) has not occurred.
• The cpcEvidence document's true triggering condition (judgment call 3) and the EUR 35→45 fee-increase date (judgment call 4) both rely on a source this cycle could not independently fetch.

Path to a verified claim (next step)

1. Independently re-fetch the D201 PDF and the RSA "Apply for your first permit" page (via Wayback, following the same access pattern), and re-confirm every field's sourceRef against the actual source text.
2. Locate and fetch the D201 form's own "Applying for a Learner Permit Guidance Notes" document (referenced throughout the form but not itself retrieved this cycle) to resolve judgment calls 3 and 4, and to confirm the fee amount directly against a first-party NDLS/RSA source rather than solely the RSA guidance page.
3. Confirm whether the online-channel wizard's actual field set matches the Part 1-5 assumption in judgment call 7, ideally via a live (non-scarce, no-PII) walkthrough if one becomes available.
4. Per this registry's structural-reference maturity convention, advancing maturity.criteria.verifiedSchema/agentReadySchema requires a second reviewer's independent field-by-field pass plus live-app execution testing, not just this authoring pass.

Re-verification

Per the practice's Cadence, nextReviewBy is set to 2027-01-07 (~6 months). Re-check the source, and confirm no newer D201/D401 edition or fee change has been published, on or before that date and on any source.url change.