Fionntán Ó Súilleabháin (Wicklow-Wexford, Sinn Fein)

In my 34 years as a primary school teacher, and having been on three secondary school boards, this is probably the worst year I can recall in terms of school transport chaos. My office is inundated with messages and calls, mostly in relation to transport for children with special needs. I could give numerous examples such as the 15 children who are today without a school bus place for Castletown National School near the Wicklow-Wexford border. Most of the children had a bus seat for years but now have none. This makes no sense. We have provided help to a bus operator who submitted a tender over six months ago but had not been contacted by Bus Éireann until we intervened. Now he has a tender but there is currently no route for him to bid on. The provider is close to the Castletown area and he would be able to cover the 15 children I mentioned in a 25-minute route if he was given approval. We have so many empty buses and children with no bus seats.

We are also dealing with another case, which is in the Kiltealy to Ballindaggan and Bunclody area. There are ten children with no bus seats. Parents from Ferns to Bunclody are paying up to €1,300 per year to a private company. There are others in the Ballygarrett and Monamolin areas of Wexford. I have contacted the Minister's office about the issue and we provided names and contact details so they would be investigated. The Minister has committed this, which is very welcome. With Bus Éireann where is the joined-up thinking? Does anyone from Bus Éireann actually drive these routes or do they use artificial intelligence or online maps for the mapping system? Something must change.

Another parent contacted us from the Arklow area. They have three children all travelling into a school in Arklow. One is in the CBS and two are in St. Mary's. One child gets a ticket but the other two have been taken off the route they have always used and put on to another route that has no bus. The parent now has to follow the school bus with her two children in the car. You could not make this stuff up.

Private bus companies are pulling out at the last minute as they feel it is not worth their while dealing with Bus Éireann due to costs. We know most companies lost one or maybe two drivers due to Bus Éireann's illogical regulation on people over the age of 70, which is age discrimination really. If a person qualifies medically, then he or she should be allowed to drive. Such drivers, for example, can come in later in the year and bring the children on a school tour as long as it is on a private bus. We can all see this is a kind of nonsense. Once they have passed the medical test that should be sufficient. It needs to change. We just need to return to having a bit of common sense in this country. It seems to be not so common these days.

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