Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank Dr. Muldoon for that. On school transport, I represent a typical urban-rural constituency and my figures may be wrong but we have the 3.7 km and 4.2 km rules as part of this anachronistic geographical construct for school transport. Until such time as that is done away with and there is a universal service we will continue to have these inequalities. Every year without fail every single one of us in the House deals with families where one child has a concessionary ticket and a sibling does not.

It is the luck of the draw. I am fascinated by the fact that a statistically significant number of the representations made to the Ombudsman for Children's office relate to education, and school transport as a subset of that. I again want to get the perspective of the witnesses - it is important to do so - on whether in the course of their deliberations with the Department observations have been made by Ms Carragher or her colleagues on how school transport operates and what impediments there are to any child or minor by dint of the current scheme that exists. In fairness to the Minister, she has made some changes to costs and in other regards, but all that did was to de factoknock out a lot of the concessionary tickets and put some people further behind again in terms of trying to get on a bus.