Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his reply. The Minister of State, Deputy Halligan, has been very forthcoming and receptive to meetings with all of us. He indicated in response to a Topical Issue I raised in this Chamber that a small amount of additional money would enable him to provide a better service to many people. The Minister has quite rightly pointed out that significant resources are invested in the school transport scheme, which is particularly important in rural Ireland. We can talk about introducing various schemes with the aim of regenerating rural Ireland, but if we do not have a satisfactory school transport scheme there will be a substantial deficit in rural Ireland. Everyone who has the privilege of representing a rural constituency - my colleagues, Deputies Niall Collins and Eugene Murphy, represent constituencies that are much like my constituency - knows that many families decide to set up homes in rural parishes on the basis of access to schools and availability of transport to primary and secondary schools. I appreciate that there will always be difficulties in any overall general scheme that is based on boundaries. There needs to be some flexibility in decision-making at local level. As we all know, changes in the old catchment areas that were assigned to schools that closed in the past can mean that rural communities fall into different towns or villages. In cases in which older siblings went to certain post-primary centres, flexibility is needed to ensure younger siblings are not denied the transport services that were available to other family members. If those services are not available, it will impose an additional cost burden on families.

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