Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There are five secondary schools in Ennis, County Clare, and they are very pressurised. Over the years, many children applying to them were refused and had to try another school and then another. These days, a common application system is operational and works well. The problem is there are children in second, third and fourth year in other schools who could not get into a school in Ennis and it was not their first choice to go elsewhere. They tried to attend their local secondary school but the constraints of the system pushed them farther afield. Every day, in the small village of Doora, SUV after SUV and people carrier after people carrier, because they can take more people, head eastwards in our county to attend secondary school in Tulla. School transport policy, which has operated largely since the 1950s, needs an overhaul for children who have been unable to attend their local school not by choice but by design of the system over the years. Will the Taoiseach look at that and will the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, look at revising the school transport system?

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