Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 16 May 2024
Public Accounts Committee
2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education
9:30 am
Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party)
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If I get a second opportunity to ask questions, I will raise a range of different subjects but I have one final question on school transport for now. The Department's own briefing note refers to pilot projects for 2024 and 2025. I would like a little bit more meat on the bones on that, including the possibility of integrating with public transport services and so on. The other point I would make is that we are in May 2024 and we are talking about this being rolled out in September. We are talking about communicating with parents, telling them how they should apply and informing them of what the changes will mean. That seems to me to be a very short time period if we are actually going to meaningfully implement pilot projects. Is there something our guests can tell us about the locations? Have we a mix of urban and rural locations? What is the population catchment size that we are looking at in these instances? When will we get to view, in detail, what these pilot projects are going to look like?