Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Of course I will be but this is factual. This was covered in the newspapers. He objected and took this project through the ringer. That is wrong. If the Department were developing a BusConnects project in Dublin, I would think it would be utterly wrong for me as someone living in County Clare to hold up a Dublin project. Yet, it is possible for someone on the other side of Ireland to hold up key infrastructure in County Clare. That kind of process that has slowed things down has to end.

There was mention of school transport. In July and August in whatever town or city in Ireland one can nip from one side of it to the other very quickly because schools are closed. That tells us that most of the traffic congestion every day, more than 50%, is down to school runs. That is at peak times. I was a schoolteacher for 16 years. There was a small road in Parteen that would have no cars on it all day but at 8.50 a.m. we would have 300 cars going up it. That is crazy. We tried to deal with that in many ways over the years. This is just an anecdote from Parteen but this could be replicated anywhere in Ireland. We went to Bus Éireann and said we had 100 kids coming from the Westbury housing estate so could we get a bus to go up and down doing two collections. Bus Éireann came out and measured and looked at its maps and said that for various reasons we could not because there was another school nearer. That is wrong. The sooner the Department of Transport gets its own hands on school transportation away from the Department of Education the better because it is being viewed through one lens and it is utterly impractical. Imagine the difference it would make to have two bus runs in the morning bringing those kids up and dropping them back. It would free up parents to have options for getting to work or working from home and it would take so many cars off the road. In July and August one can get around most places in the country very quickly. We need to embrace school transportation but the Department of Transport needs to get its hands on it as opposed to the Department of Education. I have raised a lot of issues there but I hope they can be responded to.