Eoghan Kenny (Cork North-Central, Labour)

The Minister of State is going to be well aware of some of the schools and areas I am going to raise, as we are both from in and around the same area.

As spokesperson on education for the party, I have heard from a significant number of people including teachers, parents, lobby groups within community areas and volunteers who have spoken to me about school transport or the lack of school transport. The difficulty that families are facing when it comes to trying to access a school transport is quite extraordinary.

The first school that I am going to mention is Rahan National School, which is just outside of my area of Mallow. I am very familiar with it. It is a rural small school that is continually expanding. A total of 46 students applied for a school bus for Rahan National School but that school is yet to be sanctioned for a school bus. Last year when I was a councillor on Cork County Council, significant problems arose with safety measures on the road up to Rahan National School. Thankfully, the local area engineer along with Cork County Council implemented some traffic-calming measures and safety measures. However, we could alleviate all of those safety measures if a school bus were put in place for the school.

The school principal along with many parents of pupils in the school have written to the Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, and the Minister, Deputy McEntee, as well as to Bus Éireann. While I know he will, I am asking the Minister of State again to speak to the principal in Rahan National School about facilitating a school bus for that school. The principal is now calling for it as a matter of safety as opposed to a matter of getting people onto a bus.

A lot of the focus is on rural schools and I am quite enough of a rural TD. However, I live in a town and in a housing estate of 500 houses with, give or take, about 1,000 cars. I am not saying there is a child in every house, but people face significant challenges in the morning when trying to access the town itself if they are trying to get out of the estate because we have a significant number of cars on the road. Last year, my colleague Councillor Peter Horgan, through the office of the former Deputy Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, asked for a pilot scheme to be introduced for Douglas and Blackrock to bring students from urban areas into school which he said would get 5,900 cars off the road in Douglas and Blackrock. This is similar to my town of Mallow where students who are living in urban areas would be given access to school transport.

I have discussed this with my colleagues. It establishes the groundwork for students to use public transport if we can get them into a school bus at five years of age no matter where they are living in the country. There is an impact on the use of public transport if a student is unaware of ever using it through his or her primary and post-primary years. I never used a school transport bus because I lived in the town. I do now use public transport, but there are reservations out there among young adults in particular about the use of public transport, be it a bus, a train, a Luas or whatever. If we normalised public transport at a very young age, that would continue up to their older years. This would alleviate traffic congestion in towns and cities. The Minister of State knows as well as I do the traffic congestion chaos on the main street of Mallow. I ask him to work with the Minister on the Mallow relief road if at all possible.

Coming into our office consistently over this summer have been surging complaints about the school transport system. That is not a new phenomenon. I previously worked with former Deputy Sean Sherlock in his office. It was a consistent problem that we faced every summer in his office and now in my office. I know my colleagues are facing that and I am sure they will speak to that. When as local representatives we contact the Minister of State, we hope he will be able to help with school transport issues. There is very little I can do as the local TD to help them.

When I was out doing some canvassing during this summer, I met many parents who previously had access to school transport but now do not. We have the regulations on the number of kilometres away from the school but in rural areas in particular, the reality on the ground does not focus on what the actual feeder school should be or what it is. For example, if the Patrician Academy is my feeder school, but I want to go to a different school that is not necessarily a feeder school, I should be given that opportunity. A barrier of school transport should not be put before me to get to school. That barrier should not be there. We need to understand the reality on the ground when it comes to feeder schools. Bus Éireann does not take into account that reality, which is disappointing. If a brother or sister went to that school, parents are asking why they cannot get the other child into that school. That is the reality on the ground and Bus Éireann does not understand it. It is causing frustration within families.

This is something that in an ideal world we should consider appropriate and necessary for schoolchildren. The frustration among families with school transport was evident over the summer with the number of calls, emails and messages that we received. We often hear in the media that it is down to a lack of drivers or buses, but it is absolutely not, certainly in my experience. JD Express Coach Hire in Mallow bought a bus last year and sought a school transport contract from Bus Éireann, but was told because its bus had 29 seats it did not fit the criteria for school transport. I genuinely do not know why that was. I could not get through to anyone in Bus Éireann to give me an answer on that. I could not go back to the constituents who raised that with me to clarify the answer with them. They had gone out of their way, established a company, bought the bus, sought the contract from Bus Éireann but it was not possible for them.

Last week, Sinn Féin had a Private Members' motion on special education places. The people on the northside of Cork city in the likes of Mayfield and Knocknaheeny have expressed deep frustration. They have secured appropriate special educational needs places for their children and they are quite thankful for that, but they cannot get the necessary transport. Again, it places a barrier to education. We should not be placing barriers to education. A barrier should not be something as simple as a school bus. That should not be the barrier that is being placed before school children.

In my final few seconds, I will focus on the detrimental impact this is having on working families in particular. All over Ireland, but particularly in rural areas, including rural parts of Cork North-Central, those who are going out to work in the morning are relying on grandparents, neighbours, aunts and uncles to drop their children to school. That should not be the case. I am blue in the face from asking the Department and Bus Éireann to alleviate the pressure that families are facing with school transport but with no result. In his position as Minister of State with responsibility for special education and the school transport section, I ask him to try his best to overhaul the school transport system.

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