Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his response. As we experienced in the last year since the Minister of State, Deputy Halligan, came into office and under the previous Government, I am afraid the response is entirely unsatisfactory and unacceptable.

We know what the scheme is and how it is applied. I focused specifically on Urris in this parliamentary question in order to get the Minister of State to deal with the detail of the implication of how this rule is applied to real communities and real people on the ground.

I know civil servants may be saying we need black-and-white rules and that we cannot be changing things. Civil servants like black-and-white rules, but it is the job of politicians to represent the people who elect them and to ensure that the laws of this State properly cater for the public and are sensible and equitable. This is patently not sensible and a poor use of funds. By using a mountain gap that is not passable by a bus the Department is suggesting that these students should go to a school in Buncrana instead of the school they have always attended in Carndonagh. By doing so their school bus journey would be 16 miles if they were to go to Buncrana instead of the 12 miles at present.

In addition the Government would have to provide another bus to take that route which would be very expensive and would mean the students were travelling further. It is pure nonsense.

Since they are no longer regarded as eligible, in order for these students to continue to go to Carndonagh community school using the current bus that goes past their door, they have to pay the concessionary fare. That fare is €350 per student up to a maximum of €650 if there are two or more students in a family.

This specifically affects students who previously had been eligible and did not have to pay the fare. Therefore, their parents were medical card holders because if they did not have a medical card they would previously have had to pay the fare even if they were eligible. A family with two parents and two children would have to be under the income threshold of €340 per week to qualify for the medical card. That means such a family would have to use up two weeks of their income to pay for their two children to go to secondary school. How can that be equitable and fair? We cannot stand over it and we have to deal with the issue.

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