Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The scheme costs €175 million and provides support for 116,000 children. It has been designed on the basis of eligible children being necessary to define a route for carriage. Those who are not eligible can be carried on a concessionary basis.

It also defines eligible children on the basis of distance to the school, and that is the way it is administered uniformly throughout the country. Any new approach would also have to be administered uniformly across the county. It is not possible for the Minister of State, Deputy Halligan, to devise a scheme for Leitrim, Laois or any other county and then say the Government will follow those contours because that would have a knock-on effect on other areas. The all-party approach was tried to determine whether there was an arrangement that could be uniformly applied. That is the basic difficulty. This is a uniform scheme applied nationally.

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