Michael Moynihan (Cork North-West, Fianna Fail)

Yes, from the centre of the universe. At that time, the school had a bus for sporting activities and so forth. Coláiste Treasa in Kanturk bought a bus many years ago. The comprehensive school in Boherbue has its own bus that it uses for matches and for school transport. It is an initiative the school has built.

We are looking at various ways to integrate the school transport system as much as is possible. On the value of school transport to families in rural communities, villages or towns, the Cathaoirleach, as a rural public representative, will know that when a ticket is taken from a family or when that family cannot get a ticket or the pilot scheme is not run, there is real value placed on school transport. When free education came in, it was to enable people to go to school because they did not have transport at home. Now, it is because both parents are working. It does enable people to use it. We have to be very innovative. We had a brief discussion earlier about integrating more with Rural Link, Local Link and any other facilities that exist, and how we can have an integrated transport system.

I take the point about buses. It would be something that could work. Some schools would have a bus that would be running on a route that would not normally be picked up. The bus would be picking up students who would not ordinarily be eligible for transport to the school involved. There are a number of schools that have such buses. This is something we need to look at in the context of policy. The school transport system can be the subject of greater integration but we have to ask how we go about achieving that. We are constantly trying to grow it. We have seen over the past five years how capacity has grown immensely. The Department and the Government are pumping 150% more funding into the system than was the case in 2014. We could spend as much again, but we do not have an endless pot of money for school transport.