Mr. Seán Ó Foghlú:

The concessionary element is a key part of this, as we organise the scheme on the basis of eligible pupils first and then concessionary pupils. All pupils are supposed to have applied for transport by the end of April and all payments are supposed to be made towards the end of July. The first problem is that people do not necessarily all apply and pay fees on time. That is a challenge when it comes to organising routes. Getting past that, Bus Éireann, on behalf of the Department, must organise the routes, starting on the basis of the people who applied and implementing them on the basis of those who have paid. Once all the eligible people who have paid have filled the seats, the remaining seats are available for concessionary tickets. A large number of children are travelling under the school transport scheme using concessionary tickets. In the 2017-18 school year, they numbered just over 27,000.

This year, there were approximately 3,000 applicants who applied for concessionary transport who did not receive it. Of those, just 1,129 applied on time but did not secure a seat, while 1,888 applied late and did not receive a seat.

The figure is just around about 3,000. We are speculating on a scheme here. It is a matter for a Government to make policy but I do not mind taking this a little distance. If were to have a scheme where concessionary transport was available to everyone then, we would have a different number of applicants. Those applicants are on the basis of the scheme we have at the moment, not on the basis of a putative scheme that may provide transport for all concessionary users.

We were very conscious of this being an issue. Obviously on the establishment of the current Government, we had a review and published the outcomes. We are continuing further work on the nature of "concessionary" and whether there is a way we can seek to meet some of the need that has been identified, such as for a large group of concessionary users - not individuals - who seek to go a certain distance and who may already be eligible for school transport. We are exploring options in that regard and, yes, they would cost money. They probably would cost more than the figure to which the Deputy has referred because obviously one must organise transport. We are looking at that. One of the tensions we have in the scheme is that we have a scheme where costs are going up, especially on the special education side. We also have a tension, and it is an appropriate tension, to provide a social service to people who want to have it. That is a tension always. We want to make sure that we strike the right balance and that balance is obviously in the rules of the scheme and so on. Yes, we recognise it is a difficult issue. I am not sure it is as small as the Deputy set out and I am not sure it is even as small as I have set out. If we had in place an open choice to be transported to anywhere up to a certain distance limit, that could actually cost a huge amount of money. Obviously there may be room to develop the scheme slightly. We are looking at whether that is a possibility and that would obviously cost money if we were to do that.