Declan Breathnach (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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The school transport scheme is 50 years in existence. It started in 1968. It is commendable that in the current year, 117,000 children are availing of it. Some 12,000 of them have special needs. Over 4,500 vehicles have covered what I am told was over 100 million km since the scheme started. As the old poem states, "The wheels on the bus go round and round", but unfortunately the doors of the bus open and shut. Sometimes they are shut to many.

Having just come from a meeting of the education committee, which was discussing this, I realise 450 special needs children are still waiting to be able to avail of this service. The reality is that between the contract with Bus Éireann and the Department, there are both planning and communications issues. I will start with the communications issues. Despite reviews and promises to examine the matter, the report in regard to communications could be to do better. We are told additional staff were taken on and that 35,000 calls were made, amounting to some 1,200 per day. The reality is that the lack of feedback to public representatives and parents has been nothing other than appalling. It is my firm belief that, where communication is concerned, one has to take responsibility. It is my belief and that of many others in this House, particularly the rural Deputies, who are particularly affected by this issue, that this scheme is demand-led.

We have been told that €190 million has been allocated for it, of which €27 million is a further allocation for children with special educational needs. It is not fit for purpose financially and the Minister of State must get a grip on that. I appeal for full reform of this.

Finally, with regard to planning, I was a school teacher for 35 years and talking about a small window of time during which all of this must be processed is not acceptable. As a school teacher, if I take a special needs pupil into my school, I must plan to do so two or three years in advance. Likewise, the same should be done when the pupil is going to secondary school.

Pat Casey (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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In the two and a half years the Government has been in office, there has been a sad and frustrating predictability about the school transport chaos that has hit different villages throughout Ireland, including in Wicklow, every September. It essentially has the same characteristics. Letters of notification of withdrawal of Bus Éireann school bus transport services to families in Redcross and Tinahely are due to what the company claims are capacity issues. In reality, a dysfunctional management system is failing to provide adequate school transport services to students and families who are willing to pay for them. These notices were issued in late August and, in some instances, families were not notified at all prior to the start of the school term.

In the case of Tinahely and Redcross, leaving certificate and junior certificate examination students lost their concessionary tickets even though they have been travelling on the bus for years. The start of these important examination years is being marked by unnecessary stress caused by a system that should have a student and family based approach to service delivery. More than 20 families received these notifications and many have no alternative method of getting their children to school in Coláiste Chill Mhantáin or Coláiste Bhríde. Parents are obliged to car pool, change their working hours, take time off or consider changing schools in what has turned out to be an annual farce in the school transport system. In both of these cases, the schools that are deemed eligible do not have transport services from Redcross or Tinahely. The pick-up point for the services are located some distance from the villages, over 4.5 km in the case of Redcross and over 3 km in the case of Tinahely, yet both villages have school transport travelling through the villages to Coláiste Chill Mhantáin and Coláiste Bhríde. There is no other public transport structure serving Redcross and Tinahely.

The stress caused to the students and their families cannot be underestimated and the poor response so far must be changed. The families in Tinahely and Redcross deserve better than this. The problem will not go away but will only get worse as more children will be attending these schools in the years to come.

Bobby Aylward (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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Every academic year children who are concessionary ticket holders are being left on the roadside. In the majority of cases the parents are not notified until a few weeks before the beginning of term. This places significant undue hardship on young families at what is a stressful time of the year. A number of key areas in the school transport scheme must be addressed urgently. The rules to determine eligibility must be changed as they are not fit for purpose. Parochial identity is important to rural people and the current rules dismiss family traditions of attendance at a preferred school within the parish, attendance of siblings at that school and the location of after-school and extra-curricular activities with local GAA or other sports clubs, which are important for people.

The rule stating, "Routes will not be extended or altered, additional vehicles will not be introduced, nor will larger vehicles or extra trips using existing vehicles be provided to cater for children travelling on a concessionary basis", must be scrapped. The school transport appeals office must also be scrapped and a new system put in place, as it is totally pointless. Since 2015, 558 appeals were made to the board, none of which was upheld, at a cost of €59,700 to the taxpayer. We need to establish an independent office to examine and consider these matters whereby a degree of discretion and commonsense can be applied.

However, there can be no change unless the Minister of State goes to the Ministers for Education and Skills and Public Expenditure and Reform and requests that additional money be made available in budget 2019 to restore the criteria to the pre-2011 eligibility rules that applied before the changes were made. Fianna Fáil costed this in its 2016 general election manifesto at €3.2 million. Recent research we have conducted now puts the cost at approximately €4 million, which is a relatively small amount in the budgetary context. Will the Minister of State request the funding from his colleagues in Government in advance of the budget and sort out this problem once and for all? It is an ongoing problem every year. The Minister of State will be aware of that because I have been raising it at this time of the year every year since he was appointed. I ask him to seek the funding that is required from the Minister.

John Halligan (Waterford, Independent)
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I thank the Deputies for their interesting questions. I concur with what has been said. The school transport scheme in Ireland is one of the best in Europe. We transport 117,000 children twice a day, including almost 13,000 children with special needs, in more than 4,500 vehicles covering 100 million kilometres annually at a total cost of almost €190 million. Parental contributions towards the cost of school transport is €15.4 million and the State carries the rest of the cost. We are currently transporting approximately 24,700 children who are concessionary ticket holders. My current estimate is that 350 children are ineligible for school transport who paid by the deadline date but were unsuccessful in obtaining concessionary school transport.

This issue must be explained in detail. The school transport scheme was put in place for eligible children. I did not put the scheme in place. It was introduced by Fianna Fáil and is a very good scheme, so this is not a criticism of Fianna Fáil. The objective of the school transport scheme was to carry every eligible child and every child with special needs to school. Currently, every eligible child is either on a bus or getting the grant for going to school. The scheme that has been presented to me over the past number of years is a scheme for eligible children, not concessionary children, even though the scheme carries 24,700 concessionary children.

Deputy Breathnach made a valuable point about special needs. During the summer recess, I spent two weeks in Dublin dealing with special needs cases, which can be complex. The Government ensures that every child with special educational needs has school transport. Incidentally, half the school transport budget is being used to transport children with special educational needs. I agree with that. The transport of children with special educational needs is a specialised service. The difficulty we have is operating it on an individual door-to-door basis. For example, when an application is received, a vehicle and driver must be procured. A bus escort might have to be hired and, in some instances, we are hiring two escorts for a child. Garda vetting must be carried out. This means it can take weeks after an application has been received before the transport can be provided. The media have reported on some cases where there were unacceptably long delays and I have asked the officials to examine those cases. I was not aware of them. Representatives of Bus Éireann will meet me in the next couple of weeks.

The Deputy asked that the system be changed. I will outline the problem with that. The budget currently stands at €190 million. To increase that budget to consider concessionary children will put us outside the legality of the system and outside the criteria laid down to carry eligible children and children with special needs. I am aware that Deputy Aylward has been to the forefront in raising this issue. If I had my way, I would carry every child. However, every year we have more eligible children, more children with special needs and more concessionary children. The current budget is extraordinary and it has increased year after year. Again, I must point out that the emphasis of the school transport system is to carry eligible children according to the criteria laid down and to carry children with special needs.

All of these children are being carried. The difficulties in respect of children with special needs, which I explained, are being worked through. There may be a number of eligible children who were not allocated a place because of late payment. The applications are approved in April and payment must be made by July. Also, the payment can be made in two instalments. The difficulty is that when payments were not received other children were accommodated on the buses. Was I to direct Bus Éireann to not accommodate children who had paid? Deputies opposite would be the first to criticise me if a child who had been given a place on a bus had that place withdrawn three weeks later. This is the difficulty with which I am faced. I have been advised by the Department that to cater for concessionary children who are not eligible for the scheme in the first instance additional buses would be required. If I can secure the funding to accommodate every child this year or next year I would be delighted to do so. In my view, this might be possible in the context of the budget negotiations. If Fianna Fáil is willing to work with me to secure the additional funding, that would make my life easier.

I know that the Deputies mean well and that they are seeking to represent their areas. I do not like to see any child, concessionary or otherwise, without school transport. However, I have been provided with a deck of cards that I have to work with.

Declan Breathnach (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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As I said, there are 450 special needs students who have not been accommodated, which is an indictment on the scheme. I also acknowledged that the scheme was very successful for a time but as stated by most people on this side of the House it is now not fit for purpose and it needs to be recalibrated.

Twelve months ago, the Minister of State gave an assurance to the education committee that this problem would not be repeated. I could cite a myriad of examples of people in my constituency, from Dundalk to Drogheda, who are being discommoded but I do not propose to repeat what has been already said by my colleagues. Nationally, 18% of those who are eligible for this scheme are not taking up their places, which indicates the need for a review of the scheme. In rural Ireland, as alluded to by Deputy Aylward and others, because of difficulties with house building it is unsafe for children to be walking the roads, many of whom have to do so because their parents have to go to work.

Pat Casey (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister of State for his reply. I would like to comment further on the two schools I mentioned earlier and ask that the Minister engage with me later on the specific issues. First, Coláiste Chill Mhantáin in the village of Redcross opened in 2012, following the amalgamation of two schools from Wicklow town. In terms of distance, Redcross is closer to Coláiste Chill Mhantáin than the designated school. Second, every morning a 51-seat bus travels to Wicklow town via Redcross on which there are 33 students and 18 empty seats. There are 11 children who have been discommoded under the scheme. All we need to do is apply some common sense and allocate these children seats on the school bus to Wicklow town. Some of the children have been attending that school for five years and are now in their leaving certificate year, which is a critical stage in their lives.

On Tinahely, last year additional children were accommodated by way of the provision of a larger bus. The same could be done for the children who are being asked to attend school in a different county rather than a school with which they have always been associated.

Bobby Aylward (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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I accept the Minister of State's point that he has to operate within criteria that have been laid out for the scheme. It is our job as legislators and the Minister of State's job as Minister to address problems where they arise. There is a problem in rural Ireland in particular. The demographics of rural Ireland have changed because during the good times more people built in rural areas, such that more children need to be accommodated by the service. The changes that were made in 2010-11 were in response to the financial crisis. We are out of recession, in recovery anden routeto prosperous times again. The onus is on the Minister of State to review this scheme, as he has promised over the past two years he would do, with a view to the introduction of a scheme that is fit for purpose. As I said, the demographics of rural Ireland have changed. Mothers and fathers now have to work. The day of one parent going out to work and the other remaining in the home is gone. Many people live in rural areas and they depend on the school transport system to get their children to school and we are ignoring this. It is wrong to tell a child of the third generation - in terms of a attending a particular school - that he or she must attend a school in an area to which he or she has no connection. It is wrong when his or her connection is to the parish school attended by the child's parents and grandparents. We must take cognisance of this and change the system to suit the needs of students and parents. I ask the Minister of State to take this on board.

John Halligan (Waterford, Independent)
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In regard to the particular school mentioned, I have no problem meeting the Deputy to discuss it. On the issue of students not taking up places, the percentage in this regard has increased over the last number of years from 15% to 18%. This is difficult for us. The Department and I are not in a position to question families about whether they intend to seek a place on a bus for their child or children. As Minister, I cannot do that and neither can Bus Éireann or the Department. Families are paying but for some reason or another their child or children are not taking places on the school bus.

Bobby Aylward (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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There should be penalties for not doing so.

John Halligan (Waterford, Independent)
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That would be difficult. Legally, we are not in a position to question parents about why their children are not taking up places on a bus or to question schools about whether a particular child is attending that school, which would mean they would have to take up a place on the bus. We also are not in a position to question the children. A review is under way in respect of the 18% who are not talking up places, which when completed will help us a lot.

Overall, 117,000 are being transported to and from school on a daily basis, including 13,000 children with special needs. The scheme is successful. I am not suggesting that there are not cracks in the system. Do children fall through the cracks? Yes, of course they do. I admit that emails are overlooked and mistakes are made which should be rectified sooner. I am not suggesting that everything is perfect with the scheme but 99% of those availing of the scheme think it is an excellent scheme. Since becoming Minister of State, I have endeavoured to ensure there has been no increase in the cost of this scheme, at detriment to myself in terms of my budget allocation each year. The independent value for money review showed that the amount paid by families for the school transport scheme would be four times greater if they had to drive their children to school. It is really good value.

My dilemma, and that of all other Ministers and Ministers of State, is that I am given a particular budget for the school transport scheme. The first priority is places on buses for special needs children. The second priority is places for eligible children. We then address the issue of concessionary places. This is not an easy task. As I said, only €15.4 million is paid by parents. The remainder of the cost is met by the State and it is increasing year on year. It was once remarked to me that the €190 million being spent on school transport would be better spent on replacement of prefabs and so on. I disagreed with that remark. I believe the school transport scheme is great. We need to continue to provide school transport for eligible children, including children with special needs. There have been two reviews of the scheme already. I have no problem with another review but it could recommend the provision of additional funding to provide for concessionary places. Currently, children who are not eligible under the scheme are awarded places on a concessionary basis. I will explain how this came about. When we provided buses for a particular village, town or city and those buses were 15-seat buses but there were only ten eligible children on board, we decided that rather than have the buses operating with ten empty seats we would allocate the remaining seats on a concessionary basis.

We put concessionaries on it. What happened was that concessionaries started at 700 and they are now at 24,700. The scheme is creaking at the edges and it means that every year we have to put millions of euros into the scheme to keep eligible children and children with special needs in it.