Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for her response. If her Department is developing a rural policy for Ireland I do not think it is possible to do so without talking about the totality of public transport. Increasingly, rural Ireland is a cosmopolitan place. The people who live there now traverse the entire demographic of Irish society. Without being too verbose about it, this September there was a crisis regarding the supply of school transport. Hopefully, that will be worked through. There is an opportunity here for policy coherence to radicalise how rural transport is developed. We have Local Link which, arguably, is a very successful service. That is certainly the case in my neck of the woods. In developing a rural policy there is no reason we could not look at the totality of transport. I prevail upon the Minister to take into account the fact that 120,000 children use school transport. I realise it is not across the Minister's Department, but there is the potential to use the 5,000 buses involved in school transport to transport other people as well who live in rural Ireland.

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