Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I would not rule anything out but I would point to one word in what the Deputy said, which is that these are “private” bus operations. I have myself asked the question as to whether we could look at options such as having two runs. However, to make that work, we would have to get into arrangements with the schools and we do not know if they would be happy to have staggered arrival of pupils or whether that gets in their way. Inexorably, we are brought back to the Department of Education and Skills because we would have to get agreement from the schools via the Department of Education and Skills as to how that would be done.

Believe me, all of these various options have been looked at. It has to be done in a co-ordinated way in order for solutions to be found. The ultimate solution, I would argue, is for us to be able to stabilise the level of Covid and not have to proceed with this 50%, which would then bring back into operation the system that had been set up through private arrangements. However, that is something we do not have full control over.

In the meantime, I will ask the Minister for Education and Skills to follow up on the Deputy’s proposal and on whether this is possible for those schools which have private bus service operations. The difficulty is that some children may come from a local town and some from a further town, and having different arrangements for different students could be very difficult. That may be one of the constraints in terms of a specific solution. However, I will follow up and I will come back to the Deputy if there is any possibility.

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