Mr. Richard Dolan:

The applications for the special needs scheme are year round. The number of applications for that scheme has increased significantly in recent years and that is for a whole host of reasons. The Department is trying to ramp up its response to meet that increased demand. In recent years, applications have been coming in all the time. The Department tries to have a cut-off, but it is sympathetic to these applications, so it will take them all year round. There have been 270 applications since 1 September and that is a challenge that we need to meet to get those applicants on services as soon as possible.

Senator Conway-Walsh mentioned the splitting of families and different families. The rules changed in September 2012 and that did result in all new applicants for school transport being assessed under a new set of criteria. However, the Minister made a decision at the time that all children registered for transport should retain their eligibility and that is the reason certain families would have different eligibility. This September is the first September that everybody at post-primary level now is on the new criteria and there will still be an element of that dual eligibility on the primary scheme for another two years or so.

In the case of repeat leaving certificate students, that is a challenge. The Department works with Bus Éireann to make every effort to get repeat leaving certificate students on a transport service. If there is no place available, there would be significant extra cost for putting an individual on transport because we are effectively putting on a new service at whatever that costs per day.

We spoke earlier about the concessionary issue and eligibility. Ms Flynn and Mr. Kent dealt with the safety issue, but the Department, Bus Éireann and the Road Safety Authority meet regularly to discuss road safety. We are acutely aware that this is something that, while we think it is in a good place, needs to get better and we need to keep working with the RSA, whose input we welcome.