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

I thank the Minister for that response.

Last year, the biggest issue that my own office dealt with was the issue of school transport. I am aware of parents where one of them had to give up their work because they went through the whole academic year with their child being unable to secure school transport which they were eligible. There are often difficulties arising from the deadlines in place. We know that deadlines are in place to make the management of the system a little more controllable but there are often valid reasons people cannot meet a deadline including, in some instances that I am aware of, where parents simply do not have the money at a particular point in time to pay for that school transport.

There were particular issues with the information technology, IT, system employed by Bus Éireann with regard to medical card holders. I would appreciate if the Minister could outline the specific efforts that have been made to ensure that the student who fall into those two categories are catered for on their local school bus.

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