Mr. Tomás Ó Ruairc:

I will go through the questions and my colleagues may then deal with some points in more detail. In terms of the proportion of children, if it is 160,000 and there are about 900,000 children in the school system currently, it works out at roughly one in five. We are hitting peak demographics in the school system this year or next year at post-primary, and the peak is currently moving through primary. We would anticipate that the proportion will probably be slightly higher than the one in five figure. To be clear, those are estimates and we have to get more reliable data, but that is the current position.

I was asked about the number refused. Working from memory, I think it is just over 2,200, which would include approximately 1,300 who are ineligible applicants. There are just under 900 eligible families for whom a route was not available, although they would have been given the remote area grant in that instance.

Ms Heneghan might address the notification process if time allows. I would point out that the SEN application process is a rolling year-round application process, unlike the mainstream service, which creates challenges in terms of the notification that the Deputy is reasonably asking for. On the other position, which Ms Heneghan may also clarify, we have to know the school that the child will be in before we can allocate or even work on a school transport route. I appreciate that from the parents’ point of view, that seems like an extra timeline after waiting for the school place, but we have to know where they are going to be. Ms Heneghan might clarify that further.

With regard to the pilots, we cannot get into the detail of commitments on specific routes here and now. Our ambition is to grow the number of pilots. The Government’s ambition is to increase the number of children on the scheme by 100,000 by 2030, as the Deputy noted. There are a number of factors impinging on that. In each given area where a pilot has been identified, a key factor has been the availability of contractor drivers and buses to actually follow through on the potential of the scheme. Where there is alignment with the PSO route, for example, the PSO route has to be amenable to that alignment, as happened in the Shannon-Limerick case as well.

Those are the factors that we have to take into consideration. If we are not in receipt of the data already, we will happily take that and see what can be done in that context.