Malcolm Byrne (Wicklow-Wexford, Fianna Fail)

I know the Minister of State is personally invested in improving the school transport system. It should be acknowledged that we have seen a significant increase in the number of school transport places. I want to put on record my thanks to officials in the Department, to people in Bus Éireann and to the bus companies and drivers around the country who carry tens of thousands of children to school every day. The Minister of State will appreciate it is not from those that we are hearing the complaints. The issues coming up are from where we need to expand the service. The Minister of State will be familiar with this and I have raised a number of cases in the Wicklow-Wexford constituency with him.

I was happy when the Minister, Deputy Foley, carried out a review of the school transport system in the last Oireachtas. It was the first significant review since the 1960s, when the scheme came into being. A big element of that was to significantly expand the number of children able to avail of school transport. As my colleague and friend Deputy Cleere said, we want to see an additional 100,000 children on school buses by 2030. It will give ease to their families and is critical from an environmental point of view. Part of that was to introduce a range of pilot schemes. I was happy that one of the first 2024-25 pilot schemes was introduced in north Wexford to serve the Monamolin area coming into Gorey. I pay tribute to the work of parents there. Emma Johnston, Yvonne Dempsey, Michelle Kennedy and others came together to make sure that pilot bus scheme was up and running. I am disappointed that there may only be 14 more pilots this year. I was hoping we would hear more. The Minister of State might indicate that we will see more in the course of this school year.

In my area, there is demand for going from the Monamolin-Oulart area into Wexford town. We have an existing service going into Enniscorthy. All the parents are looking for is to extend that to Oulart to take children from there. There is huge demand because these are traditional school routes. Children from the Ferns area want to go to school in Bunclody. If they live a couple of kilometres away in Tombrack, they are able to get the bus. All we ask is to extend that service as a pilot into Ferns. There is a similar request for Ballindaggan-Kiltealy into Bunclody. The reason I talk about these is they are not new routes; they are traditional school routes that have been in operation. Kids in those areas have gone to those schools for a long period but, because it is not necessarily the nearest education centre, they have not been provided with the bus. We need more flexibility on that.

In parishes and communities like Castletown and Coolgreany in north Wexford, depending on where you live in the parish, you are closer to Gorey or Arklow. People are playing the postcode lottery and using other family members' postcodes to ensure they are closer to the school they want to attend. It is crazy that communities are divided in that way. We should have flexibility whereby, provided you want to attend a school within a reasonable radius - 20 or 25 km - you should be able to do that, particularly if there is a tradition in the community of going to that school.

A policy all of us here have been talking about for far too long is the one around over-70s. In no other EU jurisdiction, nor in the North or Britain, is there a provision whereby those aged over 70 are excluded from driving school buses. There are requirements to ensure they are competent. They have to pass tests every year and the drivers and bus companies do not have a problem with doing that. This is a case where the Minister of State should take control of the situation. We are tired of it being thrown between Bus Éireann, the contractors, the Road Safety Authority and everybody else. A decision needs to be made, not just for those recently turned 70 but because the age profile of bus drivers shows it is a big challenge attracting new drivers and this problem will only grow. I ask the Minister of State to finally take this decision and be the brave Minister to take leadership on it.

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