Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:

The Deputy is right, of course; the vast majority of services are tendered out by Bus Éireann. The guidance we have been given, which is publicly available, talks about ensuring appropriate cleaning is in place in addition to hand sanitisation on the way on and off buses and so on. We do not envisage a need for a significant number of additional bus journeys but it is possible that some may be needed. We are very conscious of the challenges the private sector faces. We put a unique arrangement in place to support the private sector in that we continued to provide 50% funding notwithstanding that we did not access transport for the school year after the schools were closed. Firms also had access to other State supports for paying staff. We sought to ensure that we supported the private bus operators to make sure they would be available to us when schools returned.

Obviously this is not the responsibility of the Department but we are conscious that the other uses of that transport, such as for the tourism industry, have been hit and that transport operators have been challenged and we felt that it was important to put funding in place to support those who provide school transport during this very difficult time.