Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair for the opportunity to contribute and the witnesses for attending. I live in rural County Leitrim where the issues are very similar to those that have been raised. Almost every year we have a crisis in some parish or another where children are considered concessionary and cannot get a seat on the bus or families who have sent three of their children to a particular school find there are no seats on the school bus for younger children. These changes arose from a review of the school transport service in 2009 or 2012. There has to be an acceptance that, politically, these changes have failed. Someone needs to recognise this and get to grips with the issue. The Government is abdicating its responsibility to provide the service that people in rural areas need.

A point was raised about people who are working and do not qualify for a medical card. People often ask why others are not in employment if there are jobs available. It does not make sense for a working family in rural Ireland to take up a low-paid job as they will not get anything out of it. This issue needs to be dealt with and we need to find solutions to all of this. The big solution is to review the scheme and sort it out. In the meantime, however, and working within the parameters of the current rules, my experience is that not enough flexibility is given to the Bus Éireann organiser on the ground who sorts out the routes. I often deal with the organiser in my local area and a number of others in other areas and they are prepared to come up with solutions. When they find a problem with a school bus route they say they would change things around somewhat but they have to get permission first from up the line. Nine times out of ten they will be shut down and told that they cannot change anything. Some of these problems would be solved if more flexibility were given. It would not provide an overall solution but it would certainly go some way towards it. I stress that this needs to happen as quickly as possible.

We need to enable people to live in rural areas. The nearest school bus rule has kicked all of this out. There needs to be some flexibility on this issue because without it, we will have a serious problem. To give an example from County Leitrim of the concessionary problem, there is a bus that runs from Greagh Crossroads to Cloone village. There are six vacant seats on the bus and if it were to take a detour of 4 km, the seats would be filled with children eligible for concessionary school transport. It does not do that, however, because somebody calculated that such a move would cost a certain amount more per year. If the fact that these concessionary students would pay for their seats were considered, it would not have cost anything. For some reason, however, somebody in high office shut down the local organiser on the ground who would have seen the common sense of doing this. A level of common sense has to applied here and the people employed should be trusted. It is my experience, and the experience of most elected representatives, that if people are trusted to do their do their jobs, they will do so very adequately and cater very well for the communities they live in. This needs to happen as quickly as possible.