Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This is my fourth year as a Deputy and my fourth year debating school transport. As bad as the school transport scheme was, last year's decision to give free seats on school buses to everyone in the audience backfired badly.

Private operators were left without any students on their buses and having to charge double to those who were left using them. Ultimately, their mantra now is, "Any route but a school route." They can only provide a driver, if contracted to the school transport scheme, under 70 years of age. This notion is 30 years old. The Secretary General of the Department of Transport should be called to task. He has been advised of this, certainly by me, for four years now, and he has not changed it. We have been conducting a review every year since I have mentioned it and we have not yet seen the results of that review. The Department does not need a review. It needs to understand where people operate privately and where there is a school transport scheme; they do not marry. We had the worst increase in fuel prices two years in a row and it took the Department almost three years to do anything for the operators it was contracting. In most of that time, their operations were unsustainable and they were playing catch-up. That is why they do not contract to the school transport scheme and that is why, this year, we have many routes that cannot be fulfilled. It is not only children and families who did not get seats on buses. There are routes that do not even have buses for all of the aforementioned reasons. I am not sure what the review will yield that I have not informed the Minister of for the past four years.

There was a misleading headline in a local Wexford newspaper last week. It intimated that we had given almost 1,123 extra school bus seats to students when what we had done was given 1,123 extra temporary alleviation measure seats. These seats were taken from concessionary ticket holders, whose middle-income earning parents are hard pressed to stay home to bring their children to school, and given to the temporary applicants. We did not increase the number; we only moved them around and left approximately 1,100 students without seats. Shame on this Government. I take no joy in the fact that every backbencher in this Government has come in here today to tell the Minister what a mess she has made of it and to tell her how middle-income earning two-parent families cannot get their children to school and are risking their children going to school on bikes when they know perfectly well there should be an alternative for the tax they are paying. What would have to happen for the Department of Transport to get a reprimand from this Government or its Minister to say why has is not sorted out this mess. This is something that is well known. It is not something we can do overnight. There should be preparation and planning for the number of children we take in.

I absolutely refute Deputy O'Dowd's figure of more than 5,000 children. There are nearly 1,100 in Wexford and we have 26 counties which are availing of the transport scheme. I am sure there are many more children who have come in who we did not plan for, leaving those in the lurch who have actually had tickets for up to five years in some cases, and who are now not able to travel on the school bus with their friends. This is absolutely unnecessary. It is a disgrace that we should be talking about it, given that it has been four years since I have been elected, and I would say probably 24 years for everybody else.

It is a pity the main line Minister is not here because she is the one responsible. Her Department created a big spin by giving out free school transport seats and the following year putting many private operators out of business. There is nobody to take up the slack. The Minister of State should plan properly.

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