Bobby Aylward (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Every academic year children who are concessionary ticket holders are being left on the roadside. In the majority of cases the parents are not notified until a few weeks before the beginning of term. This places significant undue hardship on young families at what is a stressful time of the year. A number of key areas in the school transport scheme must be addressed urgently. The rules to determine eligibility must be changed as they are not fit for purpose. Parochial identity is important to rural people and the current rules dismiss family traditions of attendance at a preferred school within the parish, attendance of siblings at that school and the location of after-school and extra-curricular activities with local GAA or other sports clubs, which are important for people.

The rule stating, "Routes will not be extended or altered, additional vehicles will not be introduced, nor will larger vehicles or extra trips using existing vehicles be provided to cater for children travelling on a concessionary basis", must be scrapped. The school transport appeals office must also be scrapped and a new system put in place, as it is totally pointless. Since 2015, 558 appeals were made to the board, none of which was upheld, at a cost of €59,700 to the taxpayer. We need to establish an independent office to examine and consider these matters whereby a degree of discretion and commonsense can be applied.

However, there can be no change unless the Minister of State goes to the Ministers for Education and Skills and Public Expenditure and Reform and requests that additional money be made available in budget 2019 to restore the criteria to the pre-2011 eligibility rules that applied before the changes were made. Fianna Fáil costed this in its 2016 general election manifesto at €3.2 million. Recent research we have conducted now puts the cost at approximately €4 million, which is a relatively small amount in the budgetary context. Will the Minister of State request the funding from his colleagues in Government in advance of the budget and sort out this problem once and for all? It is an ongoing problem every year. The Minister of State will be aware of that because I have been raising it at this time of the year every year since he was appointed. I ask him to seek the funding that is required from the Minister.

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