Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

It is important that the delegates are present because as we approached the start of the new school term in September, many of us were receiving telephone calls from distraught parents who did not know how their children would get to school such was the level of uncertainty. As the delegates said, I appreciate that the delivery of the school transport service can be highly complex,, but it is also very frustrating for parents. In his presentation Mr. Kent referred to the call line, but when I received telephone calls from parents in August, my office contacted the call centre and the average waiting time on hold on the line was 20 minutes. Sometimes one was was left on hold for 30 or 35 minutes. When we eventually got through, we were told by the operator that we needed to be put through to the central office, to which they had no direct line; rather, we had to hang up and they got back to us when they had got through to the central office. I do not believe that is the way it should operate. Two days later, having been called back, we managed to get a telephone number for head office. We rang it 15 times over two days, but the number rang out every time without going to voicemail. One can imagine the frustration experienced by a parent. I am present as a representative, not as a parent with only days to go before his or her child goes to school. Something needs to change before next year.

I shall give as examples two schools in my area to demonstrate the frustration felt by parents. Mr. Richard Dolan has been exceptionally helpful in getting one of the issues deservedly over the line, for which I thank him. Finally there was someone in the Department to whom we could talk. One could not make it up. One case turned into a two-year saga. There was a Gaelscoil that had every right to a bus service. Two years ago I met the Minister of State, Deputy John Halligan, and departmental officials to discuss the matter, but a different Gaelscoil in the area which had not applied for a bus service received one. We started from square one again earlier this year and were told that the school would definitely receive a bus service. Come August, however, there was no bus service. We found out that Bus Éireann had a bus, but it appeared that the school had been confused with the other Gaelscoil. I had parents crying on the telephone to me because for two years the two Gaelscoileanna had been confused. It was a strange scenario. A parent who had been crying on the telephone had a next door neighbour who had said to her "Guess what? We got a bus for we had not even asked. It is amazing." Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. The same mistake was made twice within two years. Something needs to be done.

The second case involves the Ballinteer Educate Together school which is temporarily co-located with a second level school in Dundrum. It moved last year to a different campus in Churchtown and meets the distance criteria and so on. There is a need for greater communication between Departments when schools move as they await planning permission for a permanent home. They should automatically receive a school bus service if they move to an area more than 4 km away. The school applied, backed up with a spreadsheet listing some 100 physical applications and containing information on all of the applicants and the distances involved to support its claim. The Department confirmed receipt of the application and confirmed that it had relayed it and the supporting spreadsheet to Bus Éireann. The school then received notification that its application had been deemed to be unsuccessful. The letter stated: "Bus Éireann has confirmed that a total of 19 children are eligible for school transport, but of the 19 eligible children, only eight have actually applied for school transport". The school has still not been able to get to the bottom of the matter and has no idea what happened. Because of data protection regulations there is no way to find out who applied. There is utter confusion.

The school applied again for a bus service in the 2018-19 school year and encouraged parents to apply again through the online application service. More than ten were told on the site that they had been deemed to be eligible to apply. However, they all received rejection notices. One parent appealed the decision and was awarded the remote travel grant. Parents have reached the stage where they are so frustrated that they do not even feel like appealing the decisions made. How can we have trust that Bus Éireann will have the resources in place to deal properly with the allocation of school transport services for all? More importantly, how can we justify having a system in place that seems to just chip away at everybody who engages with it, to the point where parents just give up and the Department does not have to deal with them anymore? That has been the way in cases with which I have dealt in my constituency in the past few years.

In the case of the Gaelscoil, had it not been for the persistence of five mothers who just would not give up, who were in tears on the telephone in describing their personal circumstances and indicating why they needed a service, they got their applications over the line. In the case of the other school, however, the parents are beyond exhausted. They have other circumstances with which to deal in having to move to a temporary location and do not know if there will ever be a permanent school building. Given the mess that has been made in dealing with applications, how can the Department restore faith in the system?