Dáil debates

Tuesday, 19 July 2011

10:00 pm

Photo of Éamon Ó CuívÉamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister for Education and Skills, for coming to the House to join in what I hope will be a constructive debate on rural school transport. I am more than aware of the cost of rural school transport but I am also aware of its importance. I also know that we were forced to change the rules on school transport in the budget for 2011 due to the financial situation in which the country finds itself.

As the Minister is aware, the school transport system as we know it dates back many years to its introduction in the 1960s. The way it operates is that a pupil, who, depending on his or her age, is a certain fixed distance from the school, gets free transport. Up to now that transport was provided as long as there were seven pupils on the bus route. In recent years we reduced it from three miles to two miles for the younger cohort and made it one seat for one student. They were two very expensive changes, but very good changes. After two major steps forward, the budget introduced one step back, which was the requirement to have ten students on a bus route before a service will be provided. The reality is that this change will predominantly affect small rural schools with two or three teachers.

I believe we should consider a different way of providing the same service at the same cost to the Exchequer. In other words, there can be a win-win situation if we get our head around it. I propose that on a pilot basis and on a voluntary basis, small rural schools could apply to the Minister to get a block grant that would be approximately equivalent to the remote area grant the Department pays for the students who are too far away from the school and are entitled to free transport but are not on the school run. That would be added to the cost of the current arrangement for that school with the savings that were built in and the Department would agree to give that as a lump sum to the school. It would administer that fund, but schools would not do it on their own.

At the moment the scheme is run by the Department of Education and Skills and Bus Éireann, and it is all very rigid and fixed. In this way the parents, school management and the companies that provide the rural transport service generally would get together and regard it as an adjunct to the rural transport service in their area. With that money they would set about creating a service designed by the school management and parents, and delivered by the school in conjunction with the rural transport companies. I suggest this be done on a pilot basis with no school being forced into this new arrangement. Knowing the fabric and attitudes of rural areas, I have no doubt that kind of self-help approach would be taken up in quite a number of the more rural areas where it is much easier to do but where the problem is now much more acute for the Minister.

This is not a major problem in the big schools in the peri-urban areas. This problem is most acute for the very small schools, but their strength is knowledge of their people, co-ordination and their ability to get things done. If this proposal is accepted, we could get a win-win in the situation in which we find ourselves. We could make the savings and provide an even better service that works well and is utterly to the satisfaction of the parents and teachers in the school. I would not suggest this if we did not have rural transport companies that know the game, know how to tender, know how to do their work and have experience in this area. Many of these rural transport companies provide a service to the elderly in the middle of the morning. They could reorganise their business so that they are free at school times. I suggest we should start doing this with the small national schools and I believe we would get the synergies. When we were in government, some pilot work was done between the HSE and the rural transport companies. I had been very anxious that this would proceed much faster than it did. Even if the Minister cannot give me a positive response, I hope he will seriously consider implementing this on a pilot basis to see if it can work and become the new template.

For many years we were told that only the Department of Education and Skills could design and do all the background work for small schools. Parents used to come to us and ask that they just be given the money and they would do it cheaper and better. There was enormous resistance to this devolving of power to local boards of management. It was the best thing that ever hit rural schools.

Photo of Joanna TuffyJoanna Tuffy (Dublin Mid West, Labour)
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The Deputy's time is up.

Photo of Éamon Ó CuívÉamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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It meant a great amount of work for parents and boards of management but they did it willingly. In many cases, when they did up the school, they went out and collected considerable extra money that allowed them to provide libraries, extensions and all sorts of other things that were never planned by the Department of Education and Skills. There are now fantastic facilities in schools because we looked to the very ethos of those communities, which is "give us the money and we will spend it efficiently and in a satisfactory way".

Photo of Ruairi QuinnRuairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
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I am replying on behalf of my colleague, the Minister of State at the Department of Education and Skills, Deputy Ciarán Cannon, who has responsibility for school transport among other things. I thank the Deputy for raising this matter as it provides me with an opportunity to outline the general position regarding school transport services.

School transport is a very significant national operation involving the transportation of more than 123,000 children each day to primary and post-primary schools, including more than 8,000 children with special educational needs. Furthermore, it involves approximately 42 million journeys and more than 82 million km on 6,000 routes every school year. These services are delivered using a mix of Bus Éireann, both school transport and road passenger vehicles, private contractor vehicles, including private operator scheduled services, and Dublin Bus, Irish Rail, DART and Luas where practicable.

The Deputy will be aware that the value for money review of the school transport schemes, which was published last March, considered a number of possible approaches through which the State can seek to support school transport in line with the overall objectives of the scheme. The report concluded that, particularly in the context of complexities of deciding on eligibility for school transport, procuring school transport and developing networks for school transport, a single national organiser with a regional dimension to operate the scheme is required.

The report further concluded that in the medium term the single national organiser should continue to be Bus Éireann. Bus Éireann is well placed to offer the possibility of integrating local transport services with the rural transport network to achieve significant economies of scale and the organisation and administration of school transport scheme services offers a successful model to follow and build upon.

The Department is co-operating fully in the development of practical initiatives, led by the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, to promote co-ordination of State supported transport services such as school transport, rural transport and the Health Service Executive transport services. Bus Éireann is also involved in this process. The Minister's priority is not only to ensure optimum efficiency and effectiveness between all programmes which receive State support, including school transport which, with a budget of €180 million is a significant area of expenditure, but also to establish how this work can assist in meeting the €17 million savings target in respect of the school transport budget by 2014.

The safety of school children, travelling on school transport services is of paramount importance to the Department and Bus Éireann. Not only does the company plan and manage the countrywide network applying a range of safety checks, it places onerous obligations and standards on contractors, drivers and vehicles used on school transport services, including the arrangement of random vehicle checks and maintenance audits conducted by independent experts, and the assessment of all routes and pick up points for suitability. In addition, the company assesses pupil eligibility, collects and accounts for pupil contributions, issues tickets or passes to pupils and provides day-to-day supervision and monitoring of service performance and standards. The company also manages the vetting of all personnel involved in school transport duties in conjunction with the Garda Síochána central vetting unit.

Given the practical issues which need to be undertaken, the reality is that it would not be possible or feasible for school managements, nor indeed would they have the expertise required, to assume the role of deciding on eligibility and procuring school transport on top of fulfilling their key roles in ensuring the education of each child.

In acknowledging our existing resource constraints, it is more important than ever that we streamline our processes and procedures to the greatest extent possible and help ease the administrative burden on schools. I again thank the Deputy for raising this matter and I will bring it to the attention of the Minister of State, Deputy Cannon.