Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Work on a national aviation policy will start but has been delayed by Covid. Coming back from Glasgow last week, all of the talk in aviation was about how it can play its part in decarbonisation. That will be a very interesting and useful part of these developments.

There will be Dáil statements on the R116 report so I might leave that if I can because it is more respectful to address it in the Chamber later this afternoon.

A comprehensive review of school buses is being carried out by the Department of Education, which is responsible for these services, and Bus Éireann. I agree with the Deputy. We must look for synergies where the same bus can be used for the school run in the morning and as a community bus service in the afternoon and where we look at real innovation in terms of how we get increased numbers. I go back to an earlier comment by Deputy O'Rourke. We should be looking for a far more ambitious increase in the number of schoolchildren who can take buses and much better simplification of qualifying rules and so on. At the moment, it is a very complicated scheme that is hard to administer so it needs to change.