Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this matter. Before I address the specific issue, I would like to provide the Members of the House with an outline on the extent of the school transport service.

School transport is a significant operation managed by Bus Éireann on behalf of the Department. In the 2019-2020 school year, more than 120,000 children, including 14,200 children with special educational needs, were transported in over 5,000 vehicles on a daily basis to primary and post-primary schools throughout the country, covering over 100 million km at a cost of more than €219 million in 2019.

The purpose of my Department's school transport scheme is, having regard to available resources, to support the transport to and from the school of children who reside remote from their nearest school. With regard to transport for the summer provision programme 2020, given the exceptional circumstances in planning for delivery of the programme and the shorter than normal timeframe in which to plan the school transport services, in addition to the expansion of the programme and coupled with the social distancing requirements as per health advice, the Department, unfortunately, was not in a position to provide school transport for the programme this year. However, my Department will provide grant funding to support families with the cost of transport arrangements for those children who are eligible for school transport and have been approved to participate in the summer programme.

The grant payment is based on the distance that a family resides from their child's school of attendance. The calculation is based on four trips per day - home to school and school to home, morning and afternoon - multiplied by the number of days a child attends school for that programme. The current rate of grant is 39.12 cent per km for the first 6,437 km travelled and 21.22 cent per km for each km travelled thereafter.

Families who are already in receipt of the special transport grant for children with special educational needs will be paid as normal following completion of the summer provision programme 2020. Families who currently avail of a transport service will be contacted by the school transport section following the completion of the summer provision programme 2020 in regard to the arrangements for payment.

Families who are not in a position to make their own transport arrangements in order to avail of a school-based programme have the option of contacting the special education section of my Department with a view perhaps to inquiring about the home-based programme.

I thank the Deputy for raising this matter, affording me the opportunity to provide an outline of the extent of the school transport scheme and to respond to the issue raised.

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