Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the Minister being here. I think this is an area where a bit of innovation could get us a long way. I saw the Minister was in Noonan's Road recently. I was glad to see that. I hope Government funding for that project will remain strong.

The Minister is familiar with Cork and he may be familiar with the greater Douglas area. It is an area that has seen enormous growth in the past 20 years or so. There is a very large young population in the locality and that has had a big impact on the schools. It was difficult to know how to word the matter I raised in order to get the right response but I hope the Minister will understand what I say. The issue first came up in the context of BusConnects when a number of residents identified the number of cars that were on the road because of school runs.

In the submission I made in October 2022, I made the point that the concentration of schools in the locality is significant and I asked whether it would be worth considering if the wider Douglas-Ballinlough-Turners Cross area could be served by a specific school system on the basis that it might be an alternative fix for the Douglas Road. What we are not talking about is the current school bus system run by the Department of Education where a tender is provided. Neither are we talking about the city services operated by Bus Éireann. I believe there is a need for is a timetabled service to service all of the schools in the Douglas area. We have a particular increase in demand in the morning and evening that would not be reflected during the course of the day. We could not possibly justify additional Bus Éireann services throughout the course of the day. I do not think a single bus connected to an individual school would offer the advantage that combining these schools in a number of routes potentially offers.

I will just give the Minister a sense of it. In a little over 2 km, along a route from Douglas village to Capwell Road, which is a straight line, there are four secondary schools, namely, Douglas Community School, Regina Mundi College, Christ King Girls’ Secondary School and Coláiste Chríost Rí. That amounts to 2,358 students. Going on the census information, while not all students, the vast majority of them are being brought to school in their car. There is great potential if we were able to create a number of routes that might go perhaps three times in the morning between 7.30 a.m. and 8 a.m. One that might start in Maryborough Mount Oval; one that might start at the top of Donnybrook Hill and; one that might start at Frankfield – all coming into the village, taking an enormous number of cars off the road and a reasonable proportion of those young people into the village. That is even before we include the potential for some of the older kids in primary schools, for example, in Gaelscoil na Dúglaise, St. Columba's boys school, St. Columba's girls school, St. Luke's School and Bunscoil Chríost Rí. These schools are all along the same route but would perhaps extend the route slightly further to 2.8 km, and would add another 1,846 students. Altogether, that is 4,204 young people attending school in a very tight area. If we wanted to go a small bit further, there is Scoil Niocláis, Grange, with another 779 students.

I will outline how I imagine this would work. I do not think the National Transport Authority, NTA, has the flexibility to do it at the minute but if it was given the permission and the flexibility to do this, it might be in a position to talk to the schools, identify where their children are coming from, and plan routes that would serve the group of schools that are highly concentrated, and potentially reduce enormously the emissions, traffic, parking and safety issues that can go with the huge congestion caused by cars at the school gates. It is worth considering. It is a new approach that does not exist anywhere currently to my knowledge, but it is well worth considering given the circumstances in the locality.

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