Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

What is unfortunate about this is it could have been avoided with proper budgeting and planning. For the Minister to put the blame on Bus Éireann and to state that she looked at all the options and the company did not raise any issue is deflecting responsibility. It is the Minister's responsibility. It was referred to earlier that the Minister inherited the criteria. We must be mindful that she inherited them from her own Government, from Fianna Fáil, when the former Minister, Mary Coughlan, set out in 2009 and 2010 to destroy school transport in the way that it has been done. She segregated children into those eligible for concessionary tickets and those eligible for free transport. The school transport system was working perfectly well until the Minister's own Government got its hands on it. The Government must take responsibility and there must be accountability for how we have ended up in this situation. We are forcing children to attend schools that do not teach the subjects of their choice, to go to all-boys or all-girls schools and to attend particularly religious schools. This is what we have done to school transport. These are the criteria that we have presented. This year, families had a reasonable expectation that they would have a seat on the school bus and their work patterns and commitments reflected this.

We talk about the impact on the cost of living, which absolutely was the intention. However what has happened to these parents is that they now have the additional cost of petrol and diesel, as well as having to give up jobs and to cut their working hours. How can that be helping them with their cost of living? Or are they just collateral damage, or the cohort, as we refer to them?

Does the Minister understand the impact on these children who are left on the side of the road? The Minister was in Mayo last week. There are children in Strade who were trying to get to Castlebar and who were refused a seat on the bus. As for the impact on their mental health of not being allowed to get those seats on the bus and indeed on the bus driver who has to refuse them the seat on the bus, the damage that has been done here is absolutely enormous. As has been said, the Minister needs to apologise to the parents who have paid for a seat on the bus year on year. The inflexibility around school transport is absolutely atrocious and what we are doing to our children is not acceptable.

Could this have been avoided and what is the Minister is going to do? I know that the Minister said it will be allowed for in the budget but had sufficient funding been there in the first place in the planning and budgeting stage, all of this could have been avoided.