Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank both Deputies. I acknowledge this is very stressful for many parents, families and children. It is an issue we are all dealing with. I am dealing with it in my constituency as well. I refer to where there is no particular bus route in place or where parents are looking to see how the criteria might change and how soon we can implement it. While I cannot give the Deputies all those details now, I can say all the pilots have progressed. We hope to get a review of how they have worked and are working as soon as possible, which will then feed into any possible changes that may take place this year. Again, that must be subject to resource availability. All this must be taken in the round. It is important to say and stress that 172,500 children are already getting transport to school every day in 7,900 vehicles across 10,300 routes. The daily trips cover 100 million km. A huge level of investment, therefore, is already going into our school transport.

We are now trying to see how we can progress this even further and include even more children and ensure we add additional routes, as well as exploring where we can sync up with other existing routes. This is part of what the pilot process is doing now. The Deputies are right. The applications are open now. The closing date for new applications is Friday, 25 April, so I encourage parents, families and students to ensure they get their applications in before the deadline. The Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, the Department and I will be working with families and students to ensure that, insofar as possible, we start the expansion to be able to reach the 100,000 extra students over the coming years. It is something that will obviously have to be done on a phased basis.

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