John Halligan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. I have asked the Department to deal with the query concerning her area. The school transport scheme is a significant operation. It is managed by Bus Éireann on behalf of my Department. We are moving 117,500 children twice a day all over the country, including over 13,000 children with special needs. There are 5,000 vehicles in use per day, for primary and post-primary, covering more than 100 million km. The cost is now in excess of €200 million. The school transport scheme was originally put in place for eligible children and the requisite distance was 3.2 km for children travelling to primary school and, as the Deputy rightly says, 4.8 km for children travelling to post-primary schools and children with special needs. When I took over the system, where there was a space on a bus, for example, if there was a 25-seater bus with 20 eligible children on it, rather than have the bus leave with five empty seats, we put concessionary passengers on it. When that started, there were 300 concessionary tickets. There are now almost 25,000 concessionary tickets, even though the scheme was put in place for eligible and special needs children. There is no eligible child left without transport, as far as I know, with the exception of little hiccups in the system. My staff and I were in the office during the summer until two or three o'clock some mornings trying to get special needs children on buses. We sometimes need carers with Garda clearance for special needs children. It was a horrendous job for the staff to have to do. All children who are eligible for school transport are getting school transport or the rural grant. There is no special needs child as far as I know today who is not getting school transport.

Our problem, as the Deputy rightly says, is with the concessionary children or the second year of school. We have done two reviews of the scheme. A value for money review was undertaken a number of years ago independently, which showed that the cost was €100 for a primary school child, €220 for post-primary and a maximum of €650 for a family. That distance in a car would cost well in excess of €1,500 per year. Since I became Minister of State, we have not increased the cost to families; although the families pay €14 million, the State carries the rest. The problem we face is that this comes out of the education budget. There is not a separate budget for school transport. The budget has dramatically increased every year. We are facing into next year with a budget of between €210 million and €212 million just to keep the scheme afloat. This year alone, we have extra concessionary passengers, special needs passengers and eligible children. We will have the same next year.

We also did a review of concessionary passengers. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform insisted that buses be taken off the route or the price be increased. I prevented that from happening two years in a row but we are now facing into a crisis. Every year, we require more money from the education budget. We put an extra €1 million out of the Department of Education and Skills into the scheme this year. It requires another €4 million to take all concessionary passengers which, if I had my way, I would do from within the scheme and everybody would be cleared. However, we would be facing a crisis again next year with more concessionary passengers, more eligible children and more special needs children because of extra schools and extra pupils going to school.

We are doing our utmost in a situation where we are carrying nearly 28,000 concessionary children on a scheme that was originally set up for eligible and special needs children. We are reviewing it and looking for extra money. The extra money would cover all the concessionary tickets and also deal with the second year of school. We are in negotiations on the next budget to see if we can get the extra €4 million needed. We are dealing with the particular case raised by the Deputy in her constituency and should have an answer for her next week.

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