Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The way this is being dealt with is unsatisfactory. Parents have found out five days in advance that they were not entitled to a place. Furthermore, they are unable to contact anybody. They are told to ring a certain number and when they ring it nobody answers. In the unlikely event that somebody does answer, they are transferred to somebody else. The particular parent I cited, whose three children have been denied a place, showed up at the Bus Éireann office today and was told everyone was working from home. That is a common problem across the Civil Service. Given that the Minister sits at Cabinet, she might raise this issue at a Cabinet meeting.

I see the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Coveney, in the Chamber. Working from home is not really working for people who rely on public services. It may be working for civil servants but it is not working for people who rely on their services and cannot get through to someone at the end of a telephone line. These are ordinary members of the public who pay their taxes and hope to access services. That is a difficulty that has been encountered by me and my colleagues in my constituency office. We need to look at how working from home is actually working.

I want to go back to the specifics of this issue. This idea that the shortest route will be measured not necessarily by vehicular access but also by pedestrian access is ludicrous. The gap road, as it is called, is simply not passable by a school bus. It is not passable by a car either during much of the winter months, particularly if there is frost, a flash flood or if trees fall, as they do in Ireland. The Minister knows what mountain gaps are like; she lives in Kerry. I will send her video footage of this road during the week if she will agree to look at it and address this issue. It seems that every and any excuse is being adopted and used to deprive people of school transport. I appreciate that there are difficulties, and the Minister has difficulties, but I ask her to address that. I have agreed to give Deputy Danny Healy-Rae a couple of seconds of my time to raise an issue, if the Minster is agreeable.

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