Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)

Regarding an ongoing assessment of the effectiveness of the school transport system, as a result of the value for money review instigated by the last Government a significant number of changes were proposed and are now being implemented. One such change is that the requirement from September 2012 will be that children will be provided with transport to their nearest school. That has the potential to throw up some small anomalies although these are not significant in number.

In its assessment of this provision, Bus Éireann gave us its opinion that approximately 5% of children currently attending school and availing of school transport would be adversely affected. I asked Bus Éireann to return to me with more detailed data on that point. Anecdotally, I am led to believe the number may be significantly greater than 5% and I wish to establish if that is the case and, if so, whether there is a solution we can arrive at that continues to produce the saving but does not impinge negatively on families as it might.

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