Ms Aoife Conduit:

I thank the Deputy and the Minister. Directly in relation to the portal, when the updated health advice was given to us, it became clear to us that there was a very significant piece of work to be done by Bus Éireann in assessing hundreds of routes and assessing where additional services and buses were required and where services and routes needed to be reconfigured to allow for the 50% capacity on the post-primary services. It was agreed with Bus Éireann that as an exceptional measure, in an exceptional year, the portal would be closed so that it could take out the children in cases where eligible children had been allocated their tickets and concessionary tickets had also been allocated where there were seats available. It was also agreed that a route-by-route analysis would be undertaken to see exactly how many buses were required and to put in place the systems that would allow Bus Éireann to subcontract out, and its contractors to source the additional vehicles. That was agreed with Bus Éireann.