John Halligan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. As she knows, the programme for Government committed to a review of the concessionary charges and rules element of the school transport scheme. It was commenced in June 2016 and published in December of that year. As part of the review process, I established an Oireachtas cross-party working group, of which the Deputy was a member, to feed into it. That group met to discuss school transport issues. The review published in December made recommendations on both the charges and the rules element of concessionary school transport.

As outlined in the review, there have been a number of reports on the school transport scheme over the years, and the current scheme is based on a detailed value-for-money review published in 2011. This is very important. I have said this on many I was dealing with a full review published in 2011. Therefore, the current review did not deal with the range of issues dealt with in the 2011 report. It could not because the 2011 review was a full value-for-money review.

With regard to the charges for concessionary school transport, the recommended course of action was to continue with the current position whereby charges remain in place for those in receipt of concessionary places. I agree with this recommendation on the basis that those applying for concessionary transport are making a conscious decision to do so and understand the implications of this choice at the time of application. That is made quite clear to applicants.

The report also recommended that the number of concessionary places be reduced in line with the rules introduced in 2012 on a phased basis. Previous plans to advance this option were put on hold pending the completion of the review. Upon consideration of the review and discussions with the cross-party working group, however, I decided there should be no planned programme of downsizing in the coming years, except in line with normal operational decisions within the current scheme.

See this speech in context