Ms Lorraine Dempsey:

Normally during the summer programme or extended school year scheme, the special transport arrangement for the children in special classes and special schools would continue. However, because of the disjointed nature of schools closing down in March, as well as the possibility of those contracts being terminated, along with losing drivers and the capacity to get that up and running, the Department for Education and Skills and the Minister said they would support families to make transport arrangements by way of a grant. The problem with the grant is that simply by the very nature of special schools and special classes, they are dispersed across the country. We only have 130 special schools across the country. Many children can travel up to a maximum of an hour and a half one way to go to school in the morning. For a parent with more than one child or trying to get back into the workplace, it is simply untenable that they would be making a three-hour round trip twice a day for their child to have four hours of school-based July provision. Despite offering a grant, which would not be paid until the autumn in October or November, as well as the logistics for parents in organising transport, it means that where a child does have school-based provision on offer, the parents simply will not be able to take that up due to the transport issues.