Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

It will be hard to follow that love note to Fianna Fáil, so I will not try.

I thank Senator Ward for putting the motion on Belarus on the Order Paper today. Obviously, we, in the Green Party, as well as Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are supportive of that. It will be taken without debate, but it is important the Seanad recognises the important role that human rights defenders play across the globe. The shocking stories coming out Belarus cannot go unmentioned. I know they will be raised in a committee later today. Anything we, in the Green Party, can do, we are happy to do. Ireland is a member of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, OSCE. Belarus is also a member of the OSCE, so there are many avenues for us to follow. However, we cannot allow the fact human rights abuses are taking place to go unmentioned.

I want to raise the issue of school transport. The difficulty is that this is our final week sitting before school starts again. I would like the Leader to get in touch with the Department of Education to have a proper look at school transport. It comes up every year that children cannot get onto school buses, because they have to live a certain distance from their school. We discussed this at the Committee on Climate Action this week. If we are to see the kind of change we need in transport, children are the first port of call. The passengers in 30% of cars on our roads during rush hour are children being driven to school. We could, therefore, have a huge impact on our carbon footprint if we could get that right. However, it takes all Departments working together, including the Department of Education. School buses should be free and freely available to everyone, regardless of how far away from the school children live.

More and more children and their parents are making choices about what school they want to go to. It is right that we have that freedom. However, this means that they need to have transport, regardless of where the school is. I have raised this issue before. In terms of ethos, there are restrictions. A child could live within 1 km or 2 km two of a school, but it could be too dangerous for them to get on a bike or to walk on a footpath. That needs to be changed by the Department of Transport. Even for short distances, children should be able to get onto a school bus so that they can get to school safely.