Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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Some European countries have made their entire public transport system free in response to climate change. We do not have that kind of advanced, integrated system at the moment but it makes a massive difference to send a bus to a school. It keeps 50 cars off the road and unburdens parents in the mornings. This is key.

I am sure that each Minister pitches for their Department. The Minister, Deputy Ryan, will be looking for certain projects. However, this is far more urgent. Yes, there are issues with drivers and with concessionary and other tickets, but lessons can be learned from this summer. While we work through these current problems, we should be looking at rolling this out again in the summer of 2023.

Quite a number of Ukrainian children are in County Clare at the moment. In fact, outside of Dublin, we have the largest Ukrainian population in the country. On census night, 2% of the Clare population was Ukrainian. These children have been welcomed into communities, particularly in north and west Clare, which are very rural communities. They have been placed in hotels where there happens to be a large capacity of rooms but not necessarily the infrastructure to support them thereafter. School buses have become a major issue. We have dealt with most of the primary and secondary school queries in Clare at the moment with Ms Stephanie Ryan in the regional office of Bus Éireann, who has been fantastic. The major outlying issue has been getting Ukrainian students from their accommodation centres to schools. It has become a bane for school principals. They have all been in contact. The Minister might have particular oversight of that. I know she Minister cannot drill down in every single case, but where large clusters of students are placed, the Minister needs to look at bus accommodation for those students.