John Halligan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputies for their interesting questions. I concur with what has been said. The school transport scheme in Ireland is one of the best in Europe. We transport 117,000 children twice a day, including almost 13,000 children with special needs, in more than 4,500 vehicles covering 100 million kilometres annually at a total cost of almost €190 million. Parental contributions towards the cost of school transport is €15.4 million and the State carries the rest of the cost. We are currently transporting approximately 24,700 children who are concessionary ticket holders. My current estimate is that 350 children are ineligible for school transport who paid by the deadline date but were unsuccessful in obtaining concessionary school transport.

This issue must be explained in detail. The school transport scheme was put in place for eligible children. I did not put the scheme in place. It was introduced by Fianna Fáil and is a very good scheme, so this is not a criticism of Fianna Fáil. The objective of the school transport scheme was to carry every eligible child and every child with special needs to school. Currently, every eligible child is either on a bus or getting the grant for going to school. The scheme that has been presented to me over the past number of years is a scheme for eligible children, not concessionary children, even though the scheme carries 24,700 concessionary children.

Deputy Breathnach made a valuable point about special needs. During the summer recess, I spent two weeks in Dublin dealing with special needs cases, which can be complex. The Government ensures that every child with special educational needs has school transport. Incidentally, half the school transport budget is being used to transport children with special educational needs. I agree with that. The transport of children with special educational needs is a specialised service. The difficulty we have is operating it on an individual door-to-door basis. For example, when an application is received, a vehicle and driver must be procured. A bus escort might have to be hired and, in some instances, we are hiring two escorts for a child. Garda vetting must be carried out. This means it can take weeks after an application has been received before the transport can be provided. The media have reported on some cases where there were unacceptably long delays and I have asked the officials to examine those cases. I was not aware of them. Representatives of Bus Éireann will meet me in the next couple of weeks.

The Deputy asked that the system be changed. I will outline the problem with that. The budget currently stands at €190 million. To increase that budget to consider concessionary children will put us outside the legality of the system and outside the criteria laid down to carry eligible children and children with special needs. I am aware that Deputy Aylward has been to the forefront in raising this issue. If I had my way, I would carry every child. However, every year we have more eligible children, more children with special needs and more concessionary children. The current budget is extraordinary and it has increased year after year. Again, I must point out that the emphasis of the school transport system is to carry eligible children according to the criteria laid down and to carry children with special needs.

All of these children are being carried. The difficulties in respect of children with special needs, which I explained, are being worked through. There may be a number of eligible children who were not allocated a place because of late payment. The applications are approved in April and payment must be made by July. Also, the payment can be made in two instalments. The difficulty is that when payments were not received other children were accommodated on the buses. Was I to direct Bus Éireann to not accommodate children who had paid? Deputies opposite would be the first to criticise me if a child who had been given a place on a bus had that place withdrawn three weeks later. This is the difficulty with which I am faced. I have been advised by the Department that to cater for concessionary children who are not eligible for the scheme in the first instance additional buses would be required. If I can secure the funding to accommodate every child this year or next year I would be delighted to do so. In my view, this might be possible in the context of the budget negotiations. If Fianna Fáil is willing to work with me to secure the additional funding, that would make my life easier.

I know that the Deputies mean well and that they are seeking to represent their areas. I do not like to see any child, concessionary or otherwise, without school transport. However, I have been provided with a deck of cards that I have to work with.

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