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

The key sentence in the Minister's response is:

To be clear, in line with public transport remit, the NTA has no plans to operate a dedicated school service in the area. It is the Department of Education which has responsibility for the school transport scheme.

That is the problem which prevents something like this happening. No one really has the flexibility, the interest or the ability to do so. While the scheme would be better off in the Department of Transport, that is another day of work. The Department of Education runs a scheme in which it tenders and creates a route for a school, if it has enough children who require school transport, according to where those children live and so on. That is not going to meet the needs that are being outlined here. It will not operate that significant shift. A lot of these children would not qualify because they are too close to the school or it might not be the nearest school. I have just identified that there are four schools in a quick run. It might not even be the second-nearest school even though it might be within 2.5 km of where they live, for whatever reason. I believe the NTA would conceivably be interested in something like this but it does not actually have the ability to do so.

The Minister said that the NTA has no plans to operate a dedicated school service in the area. We are talking about creating a timetabled service that would serve a suburb, including several of the schools, at a time of major increased demand. This can be seen already in the Bus Éireann services but they are not as responsive to the particular need that arises early in the morning and in the late afternoon as the schools close. They are not as responsive to that need as they should or could be. Consequently, people are being brought to school in their cars.

There is huge potential here. I am looking for the Minister to encourage the NTA and to say to it that it has a bit of flexibility and scope to explore this with the stakeholders, which are primarily the particular schools, obviously, to see whether something is possible. The Department of Education is not going to do this. I do not believe it even has the option to potentially explore this. It is only the NTA. This is about a timetabled service that would operate in an area, rather than directly to schools. I ask the Minister to give the NTA flexibility to explore this with the stakeholders as something significant is possible here.

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