Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I want to raise the issue of people with concessionary tickets who previously were on a school bus and are no longer able to avail of that because of the effect of the Minister's announcement. I specifically want to raise the situation of Whitegate in County Clare. It is the last village in County Clare before reaching the Galway border, in the east of the county, on the Shannon. The nearest secondary school is in Scariff. According to some of the Department's calculations, the nearest secondary school is in Woodford, in the very south-east of County Galway. People typically do not go to Woodford secondary school from Whitegate in great numbers because Scariff is in County Clare and Scariff, like Whitegate, is a hurling area and hurling is quite important. The main point is Whitegate and Scariff are in County Clare. That vast majority from the national school in Whitegate go on to Scariff secondary school. If you put these locations into Google Maps, you will see that Scariff is the nearest and fastest place to get to. You can get to Woodford by a back road through Derrygoolin. I would highly recommend that the Minister go to Derrygoolin if she is interested in woodcock shooting or snipe shooting; other than that, there is nothing there. It is essentially a forest track that will take you to Woodford. You need a four-wheel drive and certainly would not be driving a school bus there. I have raised this issue with the Minister before in the context of Broadford students being told that the nearest school was across "the gap", as it is called, which you certainly would not drive on in any type of vehicle at certain times of the year. The Minister agreed to look into it and she did, in fairness. I want the Minister to look into the position of Whitegate and the school bus.

Ireland is full of roads because of British crown forces, which we are viewing differently as time moves on. They built loads of roads in Ireland. We have more roads in Ireland than any other country in western Europe for a variety of military as well as socioeconomic reasons. Many of those roads are not kept, and it would not be possible to keep all the roads and boreens across Slieve Aughty. Many of them have become forest tracks, so the idea that school buses would be taking those morning and evening or that children would be penalised because British forces built a road because they wanted to subdue a certain group of people at a particular time is an absolute nonsense. There are roads that Google would recommend people use and that are used, and there are roads that, while you could bring your cattle along them or use them if you wanted to go shooting snipe or woodcock, nobody is driving regularly. They are certainly not fit for school buses. The Minister's Department needs to get real about that. It is almost like a desperate attempt to find a road somewhere - anywhere - that can take people. Therefore, I want the Minister not only to look at the issue of Whitegate but also at the broader issue of the identification of these roads, which may be faster in theory but might in fact take an extra half an hour. I do not know if the Minister wishes to reply or if she can.