Mr. Richard Dolan:

I thank the members of the joint committee for affording us this opportunity to discuss the school transport scheme. It is an administrative scheme which was established in 1968. It was created to facilitate equality of access to primary and post-primary education for those children who, because of where they resided, might otherwise have had a difficulty in attending school regularly.

School transport is a significant national operation managed by Bus Éireann on behalf of the Department for Education and Skills. During the 2016-17 school year in the region of 116,000 children, including some 12,000 with special educational needs, were transported in approximately 4,000 vehicles on a daily basis to primary and post-primary schools throughout the country, covering over 100 million km annually.

In 2016 the total cost of school transport amounted to approximately €182 million. This included the cost of direct transport services, grant payments and funding to schools for the employment of escorts to accompany children with special educational needs whose care and safety needs were such as to require the support of an escort.

The purpose of the Department's school transport scheme is, having regard to the available resources, to support the transport to and from school of children who reside remote from their nearest school. In general, children are eligible for school transport if they are attending their nearest school and satisfy the requisite distance criteria. Families of eligible children for whom there is no school transport service available are eligible for the remote area grant towards the cost of making private transport arrangements. In general, children who are not eligible for school transport may apply for it on a concessionary basis, subject to a number of terms and conditions detailed in the scheme.

Changes to the school transport scheme were announced in budget 2011 and derived from recommendations made in a comprehensive value for money review of the scheme. The changes announced included the cessation of the closed-central school rule, CSR, at primary level, the cessation of the catchment boundary area system to determine eligibility at post-primary level and an increase, from seven to ten, in the minimum number of eligible children required to establish or retain a service. The school transport scheme is in a transitional phase which began in the 2011-12 school year in which children in the same family or area have school transport eligibility to different schools.

The purpose of the Department's school transport scheme for children with special educational needs is, having regard to the available resources, to support the transport to and from school of children with special educational needs arising from a diagnosed disability. In general, these children are eligible for school transport if they are attending the nearest recognised mainstream school or unit that is or can be resourced to meet their special educational needs under the Department's criteria. Eligibility is determined following consultation with the National Council for Special Education through its network of special educational needs organisers, SENOs. The Department and Bus Éireann are very conscious of the specialised nature of transport provision for children with special educational needs under the scheme. This is reflected in the standard of service provided and by Bus Éireann factoring the individual requirements of the children concerned into the planning of services which generally operate on a door to door basis. The number of children availing of the special educational needs scheme has increased by 3,333, from 8,317 in 2012 to 11,650 in 2016, and the overall costs of the scheme, including grants, payments to contractors and funding for school transport escorts, have risen by almost €26 million, from €57.7 million to almost €83.5 million in the same period.

School transport is provided using a mix of Bus Éireann vehicles and private contractors. A total of 90% of the vehicles used to provide services under the school transport scheme, currently equivalent to over 4,000 vehicles, are provided by private operators under contract to Bus Éireann at a cost of approximately €123 million in 2016. The general aim is to re-tender all existing subcontracted work a minimum of once every five years at the rate of about 20% a year, with a five-year contract awarded to the successful tenderer on each occasion.

The school transport scheme is very significant in transporting over 116,000 children on a daily basis at a cost of over €182 million. The criteria are applied equitably on a national basis. I thank members of the committee for giving me this opportunity and of their time.