Joe O'Reilly (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his reply. I appreciate he is working on the local brief he received. I appeal to him to revisit a couple of issues. The issue of timing does not arise because the professional personnel at Midway Services, where the young adults who have an intellectual disability attend, will collect them from the bus. The local bus driver and helpers have no issue. Therefore, that is a non issue. I appreciate the Minister received the briefing and did not write it. The young adults in question are very benign people who have a good profile and the professionals who work with them are convinced that, contrary to being a threat to children, they are great friends of the local children and travelled previously with them until they reached the age of 18 years. Only a couple of months ago they travelled on the same bus with the same young people from their community and now they are barred from travelling on the bus.

While I appreciate the Minister of State's response, I appeal that common sense, natural justice, Christianity and ordinary human values should apply here. The Minister of State should revisit the brief, go to the people who wrote the script and say, "Sad, but we are about people and this is reality".

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