Martin Browne (Tipperary, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am raising this matter because, after all that our schoolchildren and their families have been through over the past 12 to 18 months, they can do without the seemingly endless bureaucracy and battles they face in securing school transport. Every year, parents in Tipperary are left struggling to get spaces on school buses under the school transport scheme. In some instances, people have been told that, due to distance limits, they cannot get tickets despite buses for the schools they have chosen passing their houses every morning. Sometimes, those buses are not even full. In other cases, parents of children with additional needs have found that the scheme gives no consideration to the fact that the most suitable schools for their children may not be the nearest schools, which is the requirement under the scheme.

Recently, a constituent wrote to me. She has a daughter with additional educational needs who will be moving from a particular mid-Tipperary school to the Presentation Secondary School in Thurles, but she is running into problems with school transport because Thurles is not the nearest school to them. They have chosen Thurles for the simple reason that it best supports the daughter's educational needs and has a teacher with the specialist training she needs, but her mother is having to battle to secure a place.

The family of a young chap in Rearcross, County Tipperary, applied for a ticket to attend a school in Newport. The bus passes his gate every day. His brothers get that bus, but he has been turned down because he is 300 m too far from the school. I do not know whether Google Maps is being used, but citing a distance of 300 m when his siblings use the same bus is crazy.

No matter what the needs of a child are, the current scheme does not take into consideration the geography of many areas in rural Ireland, especially in a large county like Tipperary. For example, a school bus passing someone's gate may not be going to the school that the Department declares should be attended. The issue needs to be addressed once and for all. Families should not be going through this after all they have put up with over the past 12 to 18 months.

The first example I gave was of a young girl. Her family want to send her to a particular school because it has a teacher with the specialist training she needs. It is crazy that, in 2021, the Department says that children cannot use a school because of bureaucracy or someone sitting behind a desk using Google Maps. In the case of the young chap in Rearcross, we have discovered what the problem is. The Department measures a point from his house to the middle of Newport, which is where the 300 m measurement arises. From his house to the school is not measured, though. We are asking that a complete review of the scheme be undertaken as quickly as possible.

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