John Halligan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy made a number of points, including advertising the scheme. I have spoken to the Department and Bus Éireann and I have often spoken to school principals. We have a website and we contact all of the schools to tell them when the application process is beginning and when people need to apply.

The Deputy asked about extra school buses. If I had my way, all concessionary children would be on buses. The scheme has been legitimately and legislatively put in place for eligible children and children with special needs. I am not aware of any case at present, unless one or two have slipped through the system, where an eligible child or child with special needs is not on a bus.

The Deputy might be aware of the rural grant. Children who cannot get on a bus can apply for the rural grant. The difficulty is that dealing with concessionary tickets requires substantially more funding. It would mean completely revisiting the scheme and putting a new scheme in place whereby children would not need to go to their nearest school. The Deputy would then be coming in here in two years' time looking for a budget of approximately €300 million and certainly €220 million. The argument would then be made that all of this money is being spent on bringing a child to school, while prefabs are falling apart. I am not stating this is correct. I believe children need to be brought to school and I am the Minister of State with responsibility for making sure they are. We are over budget this year. Last year, we went €6 million or €7 million over budget. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has already had us in to tell us we are over budget. I have resisted increasing the price of the scheme and I have resisted taking buses off the routes. The reason is we are able to get all eligible children and children with special needs on buses. I will meet the Deputy on this particular issue and if he wants to bring representatives with him I will be delighted to meet them.

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