Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It would be interesting to look at it. I want to tease this out. There is no school transport system in the city. One just goes to whatever school one feels like. Having grown up in that milieu, I understand it perfectly. One attends the second, third, fourth, or fifth nearest school. It is like taking one bus or another - they are coming in every direction.

By contrast, in rural areas there seems to be a policy driven by the Department every year. I saw it when I was in Government and I have seen it in Opposition. The Department wants to force it because it is very handy for its bean counting to force children to go to the nearest school, whether it is a good or bad school. It also wants to get rid of concessionary tickets. We refused to do it when we were in Government. They are purposely trying to downsize the buses so there are not so many concessionary tickets because naughty people are sending children to the school of their choice rather than to the nearest school. That is taking choice out of rural education, which urban people take for granted because in an urban setting there is massive amount of choice.