Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will put my questions in the first two minutes and ask the Minister to reply in two minutes and then use the last minute for a follow-up comment.

There is widespread loss of confidence in the Minister's ability to address the challenges that will face education in the coming weeks and months. Like many Deputies, I have been speaking to leaving certificate students, other students, families of children with special needs, school management, teachers and other workers in education, including SNAs. The overwhelming view is that the Minister has not engaged with any of them sufficiently until after a crisis has emerged and that the Minister has failed to understand their concerns with her approach for a myriad of reasons.

A large part of the reason for this lack of confidence is the Minister's failure to even start to address problems that have been identified to her since last summer.

I have two questions to put to the Minister. I have raised in the House on several occasions the absolute mess that has been made of school transport for many families, particularly those in rural communities. I have brought to the Minister's attention a number of instances of children who have been deemed eligible for school transport but who have been denied a place on their local school bus because their parents or guardians submitted their payment after the arbitrary 4 August deadline. Families missed that deadline for an array of reasons, including in instances I know of in which parents simply did not have the funds in place at that stage, and they have been treated disgracefully for that. Bus Éireann has just stopped engaging with them at all. It has stopped engaging with elected representatives on this in many instances and the Minister has appeared to wash her hands of the matter.

My first question is this: what will the Minister now do to ensure that all schoolchildren who have been deemed eligible for school transport will get a seat on their school bus before the schools return after these current restrictions? Second, I have been inundated this week with communications from parents and families unable to facilitate remote learning because either they do not have access to broadband or they cannot afford laptops. What is the Minister doing to address their needs?

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