John Halligan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will be quite frank and honest with the Deputy: he has a point about the appeals system. I know this from being in opposition and will not say otherwise. I make the point that many appeals involve the requisite distance. The difficulty is that the criteria are a distance of 3.2 km from a primary school and 4.8 km from a post-primary school. Where do we stop? Do we reduce the distance to 2.1 km or 1.2 km? I am sure the Deputy can understand from where I am coming.

I understand some of the appeals are difficult. The Department tells me that we either set criteria - they were set by Fianna Fáil when in government - or we do not. By the way, it was not a criticism of the Deputy's party when I stated it had put the appeals mechanism in place. It was the right thing to do, but we do face a difficulty. I will take on board what the Deputy said about the appeals mechanism. After the meeting with the chief executive officer of Bus Éireann tomorrow, we will meet again. The Deputy might examine the new plan for concessionary travel. If we disagree or there is a problem with it, we can sit down to see if we can work through it.

Again, the big difficulty is the finance needed to include every child in the scheme. If someone tells me in the morning that another €20 million or €30 million is available to me, we can do it and we will have no problem with travel to school on a concessionary basis for children and few problems with eligibility. However, we should wait until we meet Bus Éireann tomorrow. The Deputy has made very good recommendations at our meetings. Let us go through the review process and then sit down to see where we go from there.

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