Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The reality is that the taxi, chauffeur-drive and private school bus operators have been completely ignored by the Government to date. Five weeks ago, I wrote to the Minister regarding the private school bus operators but he has yet to respond to me. These operators do not come under the remit of the Department of Education and Skills which is only interested in those that are contracted to Bus Éireann. In fact, private operators that are providing private services had to borrow copies of the documents that were circulated by Bus Éireann to find out what specifications they needed to meet. That is not good enough. The private hire market has completely collapsed at this stage.

I ask the Minister to intervene with regard to the second level school bus system. Will he explore the possibility of buses bringing half the number of students on a first run and then going back for a second run, to be rotated on a weekly basis? In that way, we could double the capacity of the bus fleet very quickly and help to address some of the problems at second level.

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