Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I attended a meeting in Abbeyknockmoy, County Galway on Monday night where more than 40 parents represented their children. Twenty-six of their children did not get school bus tickets last year because they were pushed out of the system by a late, ill-thought-out measure that was brought in to try to deal with the cost-of-living crisis by allocating free school bus tickets. Effectively, these families had to rent a private bus, costing them €850 per child for the year. There was no saving for them in the measure.

The meeting was held because the school bus application process is coming to an end and payments have to be made by 9 June, after which ticket allocations will be made to parents. The fear is that there will be many more people on the road trying to get to school even while school buses are not full because the people allocated tickets have not taken them up. People will be driving in cars after these buses to bring their children to school. This is an ill-thought-out way of providing school transport.

The school in Abbeyknockmoy feeds into Holy Rosary College, Mountbellew. All the pupils in sixth class in Newtown National School will attend Mountbellew next year. Will the Department of Education provide the necessary buses to make sure that our children can get to school without their parents having to pay for it? The criteria regarding the nearest and second nearest schools have changed, as has the nature of where people are going to school. We talk about a green economy and taking cars off the road, yet there are parents following along after buses and children standing on the side of the road watching buses they were allowed onto last year passing them by with empty seats. Parents have to pay a great deal of money to get private bus operators to bring their children to school. There is something wrong with this system. Bus Éireann needs the Government's support to ensure that whatever happens this year is done early so that parents know their children have seats on the buses and as many people as possible are accommodated. It is not a mystery. It is just a question of using practical solutions to get people to the schools they want to attend.

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