Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The biggest problem that happened last year and continues to happen is that we have school buses going to school not full. Children who were getting concessionary tickets and cannot get on these buses, because they are not getting a concessionary ticket now. This was partly due to the fact they applied on time but were refunded their money and had to do something again by July. They had to press some button or something. The system has been unforgiving.

Many parents thought that because they had applied to the scheme, that was it. There was some other anomaly or glitch in the system. It means that for families in my constituency and throughout the country, parents have had to make alternative work arrangements to get their children to school. They feel discommoded by the fact they had discretionary tickets that they were prepared to pay for and were entitled to. While money was made available last October for those passengers, the scheme has not been fulfilled for everybody because the buses are not there. We then have the situation where there are buses with vacant seats on them going to schools and parents are driving after the buses in cars with their children.

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