Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That is important because the school transport scheme has run for a long time. There were fairly transparent rules around it and, quite frankly, all of us in the House try to get our constituents on a bus when the rules do not provide for that. In recent years, the rules have been extended, through the temporary alleviation scheme, to allow as many children as possible to get on school buses even if they do not comply with the original rules of the scheme. I am very proud of the work the Department has done on that because, as I said, 99.5% of children can use the service.

The Deputy is right when she says there is a gap, but the gap is 0.5%. We do not want that gap; we want to solve this problem. An extraordinary amount of money, nearly €400 million, is spent on the scheme. I do not think people realise that is the cost of running the service, on top of the fee payments made by parents. The fee payments are a small percentage of that. It is a significant scheme from a resource and taxpayer point of view.

Thousands of children in Wicklow are getting the bus home from school as we speak. There was a 12% increase in the number of tickets issued for 2023-24, which is significant. No services were cancelled. Some contractors, including in my area, handed back bus routes the week or day before school started, as the Deputy knows. That is a problem the Minister has not caused but has to deal with.

Bus Éireann engages with the families affected, as do all of us. I am sure the Ceann Comhairle deals with these issues every single September. We all deal with them to the best of our ability, as does the Department of Education. It is fair to remind ourselves how large a scheme this is financially. A huge part of the scheme ensures children with special needs get to their schools, in terms of taxis, individual services and the people who accompany them on buses. I look forward to the review and I hope it can improve the service. That is not to say there have not been problems - there have been - but I am confident this review will work.

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