Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

One of the things that was aired last week was that we get a performance report on the one hand and then we have this separate mechanism for reporting on the well-being framework and a separate mechanism to report on the sustainable development goals. As a committee member trying to analyse performance reporting, it would make eminent sense if one process spoke more coherently to the other. That is a comment more than a question, but the officials may wish to come back on it.

I have a specific question on school transport issues. Our office, like the office of any Oireachtas Member, has been inundated with correspondence on this. It happened in previous years as well. One of the huge frustrations we experience is we have these parallel but overlapping services. It might be that the Ukrainian kids are getting dropped to school on a school bus that has ten empty places. It might that there is a bus coming from the direct provision centre. It might be that there is a bus coming to service the need of a child with a disability. Then we have the regular school transport bus. Again, it feels like we have parallel processes that are not talking to each other. There was a bus where a child with a disability was travelling with siblings, but the first cousins next door could not get on the bus and the bus was travelling empty up the road. It is incredibly frustrating for a public representative. It is incredibly frustrating to parents who see a bus travelling around the countryside with empty seats and their children are travelling to that school. Have we any plans to streamline this process so we are actually thinking about filling buses and providing the maximum benefit to the children who are attending our schools?