Michael Moynihan (Cork North-West, Fianna Fail)

On the school transport side of it, there were 14 pilot projects done in the previous year and they were followed up by a number of pilot projects last year. There is an overall view being taken by the Department. The Department is prudent in relation to how it decides on what schools are doing it and the capacity. There is no point in the Department of education approving a school transport project or pilot scheme and busing students from one school that has capacity to one that does not right now.

The Department is careful in terms of how we look at the pilot projects. The school transport section goes through them meticulously, I suppose, in terms of issues that would have arisen the previous year or in the last number of years, and then it looks at whether there is capacity within the schools being talked about. It would be bad management of the funding that we get from the Exchequer to be busing children from one school that has capacity to one that is at capacity. I do not have the exact detail, but until there is capacity at the other school, we cannot have a position where we are spending money busing people to some facility where there is not capacity.