Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am, for the next couple of minutes anyway.

Parents up and down the country are feeling badly let down as thousands of children have been left without a place on school transport. Many parents who relied on this service have been left high and dry after being told their children no longer have seats on the school bus. Incredibly, the public and Deputies are being told by Bus Éireann that additional capacity is not being sought for pupils who did not secure a ticket for this school year. Meanwhile, other parents who applied and paid on time had their children lose out due to the unfair lottery nature of the scheme. Families that expected to realise savings of €500 will now instead have additional costs heaped on them as they try to find alternatives. We have a crazy situation where parents are being forced to give up work to get their children to school. This is an utter mess.

My constituency offices in Mullingar, Longford and Athlone have been inundated with communications from very worried families who have been relying on the service and now find themselves unable to get their children to school. I do not doubt that this has also been the case in the offices of the Tánaiste's colleagues. This has happened because of a Government idea that has been poorly thought out and lacking the necessary investment. At the root of this problem is the failure of the Government and of the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, to plan and to deliver the required additional capacity. The Minister should have anticipated the increase in demand following the introduction of free school transport. She should have worked with Bus Éireann to deliver additional capacity to ensure no child was left behind. Instead of facing up to her part in this debacle, however, the Minister spent the last few weeks in hiding. She refused to appear before the Joint Committee on Education, Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science to provide answers and, more importantly, solutions for families, despite being offered no less than five alternative dates. This demonstrates a real lack of respect and understanding of the impact this situation is having. It is only now, when the school term is well under way, that the Minister has agreed to come before the joint committee.

Parents were also truly taken aback by the Tánaiste's reported comments at the Fine Gael meeting regarding the Government having made a mistake in waiving school transport fees. Waiving the school transport fees was not the mistake; the mistake was the failure to invest in the required additional capacity. Frankly, the Government has made an absolute bags of this situation. Families need solutions, and they need them now.

My Sinn Féin colleagues, Deputies Ó Laoghaire and O'Rourke, have consistently called for an additional 10,000 places on school transport. This is the level of investment necessary to get on top of this issue, to get children onto buses to get them to school and to give relief to those parents across the length and breadth of the country who are pulling their hair out with frustration. The worst part of this situation, though, is that the Government is not even trying to fix the problem. In black and white, Bus Éireann has stated that it is not looking at additional capacity for these children. The message has been loud and clear: no more buses are planned, simply get on with it.

How is the Government going to respond? What is the Government's plan to ensure that every child in need of a school bus place will get one? Will the Minister, Deputy Foley, pick up the phone and tell Bus Éireann to look for more capacity and more buses to provide more places to undo the existing chaos in the school transport system?

See this speech in context