Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Yes, I will take about seven and a half of the ten minutes. First, I thank the Minister and wish her well in her job. I know it has been a very difficult number of months in dealing with the current challenges in the education sector, at primary level, secondary level and third level.

I wish to touch on an issue that has been raised already, namely, school transport. Like many other colleagues in my constituency of Cork North-Central, I too have had quite a number of problems in areas, in particular in the rural area from Glenville across to Grenagh and Burnfort. A lot of people do not understand how decisions were arrived at. Has a target date now been set for the resolution of the outstanding issues in the school transport system?

Where one child in a school has been accommodated on a bus and there are two other children from the same family, are they are being treated as one unit of three rather than as three separate individuals? I know they are three separate individuals but I wonder if the situation could be clarified in terms of the way we are dealing with school transport given that the three individuals are coming from the one family. If there are a number of families travelling on the bus and we are trying to retain 50%, it is a very small number of families in real terms that are travelling because there are two, three or four from the same family. I wonder if that issue has been looked at.

While I accept that some seats are provided on a concessionary basis, when there be a more definitive idea of what is available and when will parents be made aware of availability?

I raised earlier the issue of getting the message out to young people. I am aiming it at secondary school students. Third level students will be returning to colleges in the next week or two. Will a focused message be sent out from the Department together with other Departments? In the Minister's constituency in the past week, we saw many young people socialising. That is not surprising given the time of year. In the area I represent around University College Cork, UCC and Cork Institute of Technology, CIT, one has a lot of socialising in the first six weeks of the academic year. Is there a targeted campaign to deal with that issue?

Some speakers raised the issue of leaving certificate students. That situation needs to be clarified further for those who sat the leaving certificate last year but who are now sitting it this year. There seems to be a lot of uncertainty and we are receiving a lot of queries in that regard.

Earlier today we heard that substitute or replacement teachers are available in schools but that in some of the larger urban areas, there is a significant challenge in trying to get the necessary numbers to fill the gaps in the event of teachers not being able to be at work who need to be replaced. Is any additional incentive being proposed to get teachers in those areas where teachers would find it expensive to live due to high rents?

Is anything being proposed by the Department to deal with that shortage? It is difficult to find a replacement for a teacher who is unable to be at work, whether as a result of illness or otherwise, in areas where there is not a sufficient number of substitute teachers. Will an incentive to deal with that issue be put in place?