Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:

We did for 40 years but we cannot set it in stone and it was reviewed.

The other point is this is about school transport. Parents can choose to send their children to other schools, if they wish. I know there are challenges on parents to get students to different schools in respect of transport and so on. This is not requiring them to attend school. Parents can choose which school to attend, obviously subject to there being places in schools. This is about the availability of school transport to support that. I draw that distinction because I think it is an important distinction.

If we introduced and kept the level of choice to allow people to go to somebody under the former closed or close school rule, as well as the closest school, which was the policy dilemma, we would then have a myriad of choice, and a myriad of choice in transport costs a huge amount of money. It is a reasonable policy to say that the State will support a child to go to his or her nearest primary school. If a parent wishes to choose for a child to go to a different primary school, that is a reasonable choice for a parent to make but it is a choice that parents can make and arrange themselves.