Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

With all due respect to the Minister of State, my question was related to bus cancellations in Wicklow and he did not mention Wicklow once in this reply. Could he please tell me what I will tell parents in Wicklow who do not have a seat on a school bus for their children tomorrow and next week? While he can play with words and say that they the routes were not cancelled but were handed back, the end result for parents is exactly the same. Parents are giving up jobs and moving their children to different towns. It is absolutely disgraceful. Parents paid for their tickets early in the year. They were guaranteed seats in May but the bus has not shown up for them.

I really wish the Minister of State had not spent half his time talking about how great the school bus transport system is; it is clearly not fit for purpose. While he can say that only 1.5% of pupils are being impacted, that amounts to 2,000 pupils. Some 1.5% of 133,000 is a lot of pupils and, therefore, 2,000 families are being impacted by the lack of a bus service. The fact that we are not getting any additional information from the Minister of State is just not acceptable.

With regard to the exceptional no-service interim grant of €5 a day, first, it is paid retrospectively, and some parents do not have the money to cover that upfront. Second, it is a very small amount and if people are trying to get from one end of County Wicklow to the other, that will not get them very far. Third, that is all well and good if there is alternative public transport in your area. There is not. Public transport is not available for the majority of my constituents. Public transport provision in Wicklow is absolutely disgraceful. There is not a sufficient amount of it, and parents do not have all these different options available to them. It is up to parents now or their families or friends to transport their children to school. It is not acceptable. It is not the service that they were promised or that they paid for, and it is certainly not the service that the Minister for Education continually refers to when she talks about the great public transport service that is there for children.

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