Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I am pleased to be here today, with the Minister of State, Deputy Michael Moynihan, who has responsibility for school transport in the Department, to share an update on school transport. As the House will be aware, the school transport scheme is a hugely significant operation managed by Bus Éireann on behalf of my Department.

In the current school year already almost 178,000 children and young people are being transported on a daily basis to schools throughout the country. This figure includes pupils travelling on mainstream services, pupils who have arrived in Ireland from Ukraine, those residing in international protection accommodation services, IPAS, centres and also dedicated services for children with special educational needs. The scheme has expanded significantly over the past six years and we have seen an almost 50% increase in the number of pupils travelling on all services. This growth has been especially marked in the area of special educational needs transport, which now represents almost 60% of the scheme's total costs, while serving around 13% of pupils. This reflects the Department's continued commitment to inclusive access and tailored supports for young people who need them.

Since 2018, investment in the scheme has more than doubled, from €200 million to €512 million in 2024. We have continued to expand the number of students benefiting from the school transport scheme. It is important to stress that point. Every year, the number of young people accessing school transport has increased. However, there are, of course, particular issues in some areas of the country due to the growing populations and growing demand for school transport services in these areas. In my county in particular, and in other commuter areas and larger towns, where we have seen population growth, a young population and a young school-going population, there have been particular challenges. I stress that everything is being done to ensure that all services are in place as soon as possible.

This is a very important issue and is, of course, particularly important for children and young people with special educational needs and their families who require appropriate school transport provision in order to allow their children to attend school. Resolving these difficulties is a priority for me, the Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, and the team with which we work in my Department, working closely with Bus Éireann. It is important that everybody is focused on ensuring that transport arrangements are put in place as soon as possible. Particular issues have arisen in my county but every day, transport solutions are being found and issues are being resolved for families and, in particular, for children. While the situation is dynamic with solutions being found on a daily basis, those currently without transport represent a very small number of pupils on school transport services nationally. Everything is being done to ensure that those final challenges are overcome.

To outline the magnitude of the scheme, over 149,000 pupils are now travelling on mainstream services, almost 5,500 pupils who arrived in Ireland from Ukraine have been provided with school transport and 23,500 children are travelling on dedicated services for children with special educational needs. Millions of kilometres in school transport routes are provided every day. Every five years, new tendering processes must happen in line with our tender rules.

The school transport 2030 review, published in early 2024, represented the most comprehensive assessment of the scheme since its establishment in 1967. It was informed by extensive consultation with families and students, including those with special educational needs and all other stakeholders. The review outlines a path to expanding access to an additional 100,000 pupils by 2030 while promoting sustainable transport and improving integration with the wider public transport network. That work has already started through pilot programmes. A key outcome is to reduce the number of individual car journeys to school, supporting local communities and our national climate objectives. Achieving the Government's ambition of 260,000 pupils on school transport services would result in significant gain for the environment and a huge societal gain. Importantly, our young people and their families will benefit the most. This is clearly evidenced in the review for the school transport scheme. For households in rural areas or those with limited access to public transport, the scheme plays a critical role in enabling parents to engage in the workforce or pursue training or education. We all know that, for the most part, things have changed for many families. Both parents are working. To be able to get to work and do school dropoffs, perhaps, where there is more than one sibling, to different schools in different directions is complex, stressful and challenging. That is why it is so important. It is why we, as a Government, are absolutely committed to rolling this out to as many students as possible.

The review also demonstrated the impact on pupils who use school transport. They are developing valuable life skills, including independence, time management and confidence in navigating public transport services. Those skills support long-term development and are beneficial in many ways.

The scale of the scheme is significant. We all understand that any changes, particularly of the magnitude we are talking about, need to be planned and implemented well. This is particularly relevant given the issues that have arisen in the current school year with regard to having access to enough drivers and vehicle shortages. Careful consideration must be given to how best to expand the scheme and to cater for that demand. If we were to say that every single child should be able to access school transport tomorrow, it simply would not be possible. We need to ensure it is planned, phased and done in the most appropriate way.

That phased implementation approach was adopted to manage increased demand in a planned and sustainable manner. This commenced with 14 pilot projects in the 2024-2025 school year, developed in partnership with the Department of Transport and Bus Éireann. These pilot projects are continuing for the 2025-2026 school year. They will be monitored during the year and evaluated in full at the end of the 2025-2026 school year. The school transport section of my Department actively engages with Bus Éireann, which is rolling this out, to assess and identify where more school transport pilot programmes can be successfully delivered. The Department has asked Bus Éireann to review where additional capacity can be made available for concessionary pupils who paid on time and would become eligible if the revised school transport scheme criteria was rolled out in full. The nearest school distance and wider criteria are currently still in place. The intention is absolutely to change those but we must do so on a phased basis. That is in order to pilot the revised scheme eligibility criteria in a small number of areas.

Sourcing additional capacity can take time where a procurement process is required and subsequent vehicle and driver safety compliance checks need to be completed. There were many challenges this year. Pupils had been given tickets. They were not concessionary and those pupils had valid tickets, but we could not find someone to apply for the tender and simply could not identify the drivers. We must ensure all of this is worked through. These pilots will provide valuable insights into the impact of increased demand on the scheme and the potential for integrating public transport with school transport services, particularly for older children. I am not saying that we will put younger students on public transport but we will do so for older students, where possible. We will also look for more opportunities to promote more sustainable modes of transport. The findings from these evaluations will guide the planning and implementation needed for a national roll-out of a revised school transport scheme.

The priority is to provide transport to pupils who are eligible under the current terms and to ensure we expand and remove those terms to ensure as many students as possible can access transport as quickly as possible. While some pilot projects are already up and running, we want to work to ensure the availability of vehicles and drivers in the remaining pilot areas and to ensure that additional services can commence as the pilot proceeds. We continue to roll out enhancements to technology and customer service. Improvements have been made to enhance the customer experience, particularly during peak summer months. Bus Éireann has a dedicated call centre, with a call back and webchat facility available to families. The call centre operated with extending opening hours during the summer, when required. A considerable number of people in Bus Éireann and my Department did a huge amount of work over the summer to ensure that as many routes as possible were in place, as many tickets as possible were given out and the many issues were resolved as soon as possible. The biggest challenge and main frustration for parents is the fact that so much of this happens so close to when school is starting. That is the big change we need to make. Work is under way, through the Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, with my support, to make those changes around the timeline. Where children are going to school is a factor. Once parents know where their children are going to school, we want to ensure they can apply for the bus route and pay. We must ensure that Bus Éireann or any private provider can start to map out the routes much earlier. That way, when problems arise, they do not arise the week before the students go back to school. That is the source of much of the frustration. A considerable amount of work is happening in the Department to ensure that can be the case.

Work is also under way in respect of smart ticketing, digital route planning and improvements to the SEN transport application process.

It is also intended to continue to pilot the use of LEAP cards and technology in existing pilot areas and introduce LEAP cards in some of the newer pilot areas for 2025–26. Therefore, a huge amount of work is happening to ensure we have a system that is efficient but that can be rolled out to more students as soon as possible.

With regard to capacity issues, which are the main problem, as with other transport sectors, the school transport scheme continues to experience driver and contractor availability challenges. As part of a national focus on driver requirements, the Department facilitated a working group involving my Department, the Department of Transport, Bus Éireann and Education and Training Boards Ireland to increase the availability of drivers, within the school transport scheme and other public transport areas nationally, through existing and potential training schemes. As a result of the work done by the group, a transport task force has been established. It is chaired by the Department of Transport and its aim is to work collaboratively to identify factors that contribute to recruitment issues and put forward recommendations and measures to create a pipeline of workers to address these issues. Of course, we know some of the challenges and the issues that are being discussed. In addition to considering the possibility for those who are over 70 to perhaps drive for longer, other issues are being considered in that context.

There is no doubt that school transport is such an important service for so many parents. We have just heard from Opposition parties on back-to-school issues and the stress they put on parents. Our objective is to ensure we provide services and transport for young people and do so in a timely manner. Transport-related stress is not the only stress parents face, and that is why the current and previous Governments have made huge strides to try to remove stresses at the time of going back to school. Every single child now gets free books when going to school. Some €200 million in ICT grants is being provided to schools. We have hot school meals for all primary school students. In this regard, the final phase is being rolled out. An increasing number of families are able to access the clothing and footwear allowance, which has been expanded again this year. Therefore, a huge amount of work is being done by the current Government and the previous one to ensure that where we can remove stresses for parents, bearing in mind that we are not going to eliminate every stress, we do so. My colleague and I know that school transport can play a huge role overall in this regard. We are absolutely committed to ensuring we expand the service to as many students as possible.

I stress again that the number of students availing of the service has increased from 120,000 in 2018 to 178,000. This equates to an increase of almost 50%. I hope that shows our commitment very clearly. What we want to do goes even further than that.

Michael Moynihan (Cork North-West, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Ceann Comhairle for the opportunity to address the House and provide an update on the provision of school transport. This is a hugely important issue, particularly for children and young people with additional needs and their families, many of whom require school transport provision to support children in attending school. I pay tribute to my colleague the Minister, Deputy McEntee, and thank her for her great support and co-operation, not just on this issue but also on others that arise right throughout the Department of Education.

Since taking up my position in January, I have met many families and visited many schools, which have shared their experiences in relation to school transport. The engagement we have had, particularly with families, has shown school transport to be a vital service to provide children and young people with access to education. I am pleased to see how much the scheme has grown over recent years and note there have been some reported challenges. We are not blind to these. We understand them and are committed to ensuring they are addressed.

The school transport scheme was established in 1967, when post-primary education was made free to all, to support children and young people in accessing education. This remains a core belief of the service. It is not just a logistical service involving buses and routes but also a lifeline for families across the island of Ireland. For decades, the scheme has helped to create opportunities and equality. It is about ensuring no child is left behind simply because they live beyond the reach of public transport.

In many parts of the country, especially rural and under-serviced areas, the school transport scheme is the only bridge between home and the classroom. The scale of what we are talking about here today is immense. Every single school day, over 178,000 children climb on board approximately 8,200 vehicles, which travel along 10,600 routes to primary and post-primary schools across the country. The service supports parents and guardians in accessing employment by easing one extra stress and their worry about how their children will get to school. It continues to support pupils living in rural and remote areas and children and young people with additional needs, as well as the national sustainability and climate goals.

The scheme, which Bus Éireann operates on behalf of the Department, has expanded significantly over the past six years. In that time, the number of children and young people using the services has grown from 120,000 to 178,000, which is an increase of almost 50%. The services facilitates over 100,000 mainstream pupils who are eligible for transport as well as 49,000 with concessionary tickets. In addition, over 23,000 pupils travel on dedicated school transport services for children with additional needs. The growth has been exceptionally marked in the area of special education needing transport, which now represent almost 60% of the scheme's total cost, while serving around 13% of the pupils. This reflects the Department’s and Government's continued commitment to inclusive access and tailored supports.

Between 2018 and 2024, investment in the scheme more than doubled, from €200 million to €512 million. This investment is extremely welcome as the scheme and associated costs continue to grow. This growth is driven by increased pupil numbers, the expansion of the scheme for children with additional needs and increased transport costs.

As already mentioned, there have been some challenges with the service. I wholeheartedly acknowledge the shortcomings and challenges we have. In our weekly meetings with senior officials from the Department and Bus Éireann, difficulties in sourcing contractors or vehicles in a small number of locations have also been highlighted. It is important to note that the services in question have not been cancelled and that the affected families have been contacted directly in relation to the challenges.

There can sometimes be accusations that the lack or late withdrawal of a service is due to poor planning. We all know that services should be sorted out on time before a school year starts. While I understand the frustration, it is important to highlight that the issues which arise are sometimes out of anyone's control. These can include contractors informing Bus Éireann they are withdrawing their services just days before the school term begins. This happens every year, with no clear reasons given. I have seen this year a couple of instances where major contractors withdrew their services well into August on health grounds. These are obviously very unfortunate circumstances, for both the contractors and the impacted families. They mean Bus Éireann has only limited time in which to secure new services.

Difficulties have also arisen in some cases due to the lack of driver or contractor availability or where zero bids were received for a particular service despite repeated efforts by both the Department and Bus Éireann to procure a contractor. I assure the House, however, that Bus Éireann’s school transport team is working extensively to ensure transport arrangements are put in place as soon as possible. While the situation is dynamic, with solutions being found daily, those without transport currently represent a very small number of pupils by comparison with the number using school transport services nationally. Approximately 1% are affected. Where a service cannot be provided immediately, my Department will provide interim grants to eligible pupils who travel on mainstream services and services for children with additional needs towards the cost of private transportation until we have a service in place.

In an effort to meet these challenges, a wider task force has been established in the Department of Transport to action possible solutions to increase the availability of contractors and drivers. The Department of education has been working extensively with Bus Éireann to streamline the procurement process for contractors. A national and local media campaign was launched earlier this year to attract new contractors and drivers to the scheme. Bus Éireann engaged with local operators to secure cover for services affected. The Department of Education and Bus Éireann continue to engage with the National Transport Authority, NTA, to identify transport solutions available on public transport. Bus Éireann advertises for contractors in the NTA bulletin, specifically targeting contractors of smaller vehicles.

On the matter of the driver age limit, the current retirement age, 70, remains in place across Bus Éireann services. A review commissioned by the Road Safety Authority on this issue was completed in August 2024. This review spoke to why the limit should remain. However, the Department of education continues to engage on the commitment in the programme for Government to assess the feasibility of removing the inclusion of drivers over 70. This is a work in progress and a matter on which I will be happy to update the House once further work has been advanced.

As outlined by the Minister, the school transport 2030 review has led to a welcome expansion of the scheme, which is growing year on year. The roll-out of the recommended changes to the scheme will provide 260,000 children and young people with transport to and from school daily. The expansion will have a very positive impact on working families and rural communities and will provide young people with self-confidence and independence. It will also reduce carbon emissions and traffic congestion. The recommendations are all to be pursued on a phased basis through pilots around the country. I hope to advance these further in the years ahead. Improvements has also been made to enhancing the customer experience, particularly during peak summer months. These include: a dedicated Bus Éireann call centre for school transport queries; a dedicated email address for Oireachtas Members; and a new case management system within the Department.

On the school transport appeals board, the Department ensures that all parents and children have access to an efficient and effective appeals process if their applications for eligibility for school transport are refused. This board is independent in the performance of its functions and works in accordance with the terms of its operating procedures. Parents and guardians of children or children who have reached the age of 18 may submit appeals.

I will touch on the important role of school bus escorts who can be hired in cases where there are care and safety needs for a child while on school transport, such as to require the support of a school bus escort. My Department provides grant funding directly to schools for the employment of school bus escorts and sets the rate of pay. The boards of management of ETBs are responsible for the employment of school bus escorts. In recognition of the fact that these escorts play a vital role in supporting children with additional needs to ensure they can get to and from school and as a recommended action arising from the recent school transport review, the commitment to review pay rates for school bus escorts has been completed and an information pack has been issued to schools. The rate of pay for escorts has increased from €13.40 an hour to €15.60 per hour as of 1 August 2025.

I travelled to primary and post-primary school on the school bus scheme. That scheme has been a major lifeline for people. In its inception, it was for people who did not have transport. Now it is very important for working families. We have met throughout the summer. There were closing dates in April and again in June. The Department and Bus Éireann worked continuously throughout the summer to ensure we had the best possible service in place through mapping out where the demands were and what we needed to do. A number of schemes were very successfully piloted last year and again this year. A number of challenges remain right across the system, but we are very committed to working towards it because we fundamentally believe the school transport system is a fundamental piece of the infrastructure of the State, particularly in special education. Many students I know who require special education, whether it is special classes or special schools, simply would not be able to attend except for the school transport system.

I compliment the departmental officials and those from Bus Éireann who have been available day and night over the past number of weeks to try to find resolutions to issues that have arisen across the country. They have been able to find some resolutions. There are some issues we are still dealing with, but the fundamental point is this is a highly respected and integral part of our education system. We must continue to make sure of that. The Minister and I are very committed to a new system being developed over the coming years. We are also looking at the dates and at bringing it back in order that we will have clarity earlier on, rather than in the last week of August or the first week of September, and find resolutions. We need to bring back those dates. The Department and Bus Éireann are both looking at how that can be done to ensure we can have a better system into the future.

Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important subject. This year is not just another episode in a long-running saga of Government failure on school transport. This year represents a new low. In addition to the usual annual debacle, never before have we had the situation on such a scale where tickets were issued and routes confirmed but, at the eleventh hour, in some cases the day before school was due to start, services were cancelled. There was no bus, no driver, no nothing. It was and remains a shambles. Responsibility for this lies squarely at the feet of this dithering, inactive Government. It makes no sense, for example, that a bus driver can be aged over 70 and can drive kids to a GAA game at 9.30 a.m. but cannot be over 70 and drive them to school at 9.00 a.m. The Minister and Minister of State should do something about that.

The situation in my constituency of Meath East, which I share with the Minister, is a microcosm of a State-wide scandal. In August, scores of parents contacted my office in sheer desperation. Their children, some of whom had bus tickets for years, were left without seats on buses. Their plans for the new school term were thrown into utter disarray. Why? It was because of this Government's blatant failure to implement the very recommendations of a review it commissioned. That is incredible. The review of the school transport scheme took three long years to complete. It was finally published in February of last year, 19 months ago. One of its central headline recommendations was to reduce the arbitrary and outdated "near a school" distance criteria. It proposed that from September 2025, the distance would be reduced from 3.2 km to 1 km for primary school pupils and from 4.8 km to 2 km for secondary students. This single change would have been transformative. It would have shifted many children from the precarious concessionary category to secure eligible status. It would have opened the scheme up to additional pupils, finally acknowledging the reality of rural Ireland and modern commuting patterns. What happened? Absolutely nothing. The recommendation was shelved. Instead of a step change, we had a step backwards. We had a tiny number of pilot studies - just 14 on a network of over 10,600 routes. Consultants have been appointed and working groups set up. The Government had a review. Now, it has set up groups to review that review instead of implementing it. You literally could not make it up.

The consequence of this inaction is children across Meath and the State are locked out of school transport yet again. The promise of the review has been broken. The failure to act by the Minister and her Department has directly resulted in children being denied a safe, reliable way to get to school. This is a conscious choice that has hurt families. To make matters worse, Bus Éireann outright refuses to answer basic questions. This is insult to injury and must be addressed. The impact of all of this is real and profound. It turns family life upside down. Parents are faced with impossible choices trying to co-ordinate school runs that add hours to their day or, in some cases, face the prospect of having to reduce hours or give up their jobs - typically mothers - to make the logistics work.

This is not just a transport issue. It is an issue of childcare, family income, gender equality and children's right to education. The Minister has failed to prepare or to act on and implement the review's key recommendations. This has to change.

Shónagh Ní Raghallaigh (Kildare South, Sinn Fein)
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The roll-out of the school transport scheme in Kildare this year was a complete shambles, as my colleague just said. On the first day of school, my phone and inbox were flooded with messages from parents who were informed at the very last minute that their child's bus route had been cancelled. We know that in some of these instances no bid was made on the route, yet parents were left completely in the dark. That kind of breakdown in co-ordination should never have happened. I hope the Department and Bus Éireann are taking measures to ensure that families are not left in the same position next year.

One family just outside Kildare town has two young girls attending Gaelscoil Mhic Aodha. A third is due to start there next year. They are concessionary ticket holders but were left without seats this year. Their only option is to walk to school. Their mother is a school principal who cannot step away from her own students to drive her children, while their father regularly works abroad. She is now considering a career break simply because there is no safe or reliable way to get her children to school. Tá pionós á chur ar na teaghlaigh seo de bharr go bhfuil siad ag seoladh a gcuid páistí chuig Gaelscoil.

Noelle, another mother, also contacted me. She sends her children to the same school and her family are in a similar predicament. Her eldest, who is aged ten, walks the poorly adapted road to school. Her youngest, who has just started i naíonáin bheaga, is taking a lift on a bus three days a week. Noelle and her husband are both engineers, but she is the one whose career has suffered in filling in the gaps, arriving late to work and having to hide the strain she is under in a male-dominated field.

These stories are not isolated. Families describe years of chaos - tickets one year but gone the next, routes starting and then being abandoned. The uncertainty is crushing and the burden falls disproportionately on mothers. When the scheme works, it supports families and promotes gender equality but when it fails, it deepens inequality and puts children at risk. I ask the Minister to look urgently at the Rathangan to Kildare town route in particular, which is reportedly one of the busiest in the district. A second bus could be provided immediately if the Department gave the green light. Tá an t-éileamh ann.

Many parents have contacted me regarding the lack of routes serving the Gaelcholáiste in Nás na Ríogh. Children from Monasterevin, Kildare town and Newbridge are all travelling together to Naas. As a result, these children are arriving up to 40 minutes late every day. Again, families are being punished for availing of their right to education through meán na Gaeilge. This could be solved by adding additional routes.

The school transport scheme was designed to make family life manageable for ordinary working people. Right now, it is failing them. I recognise capacity challenges exist but it does not appear that the Government is exploring every possible solution.

Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)
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It is a pity the Minister could not stay for the debate. However, I have her script in front of me. It says "check against delivery". That is very good advice because the Government is generally very big on sound bites and woefully inadequate when it comes to actual delivery. In her script, the Minister tells us that solutions are being found every single day. Does this not tell us that every single day, issues are arising? The Government had years to plan for this. It has census data and data from the schools. The Minister has a massive Department and people who I am sure are working incredibly hard yet it seems that the Government still finds itself presiding over a shambles every year, with kids unable to get to school and parents getting in trouble at work for being late. Despite this, the Minister and Minister of State somehow managed to ramble into the Chamber and act surprised that the kids who needed a seat on the school bus last year also needed a seat on the school bus this year or, God forbid, there were more kids, different kids or kids living somewhere else who needed seats. The Minister of State has a very well-staffed Department.

People travel for plenty of reasons. Sometimes, they travel because they do not live near the school, and that is fair enough. They travel because they want to access education as Gaeilge or because they want to access non-denominational education or specific religious education. Kids with special needs are being specifically failed repeatedly. It is not appropriate for kids to have to take taxis. That should be a last resort. They should get a seat on the bus. They should not be forgotten by this Government. The Minister of State should give them a seat on the bus - he knows that - but they are left. Up until the last minute, the Government leaves parents waiting to find out how they will get their kids to school. Not everybody has a flexible job or an understanding boss but every parent wants to get his or her child to school safely. Parents simply want the Government to work with them to achieve that.

Natasha Newsome Drennan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Sinn Fein)
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We all know when our local school term begins. It is not a surprise. It is the most predictable event in our calendar yet despite all this notice, parents across Kilkenny and Carlow are left to face the same entirely preventable crisis in school transport. Year after year, the routes and student numbers remain largely consistent. This is not a complex, unforeseen challenge, but a basic function of the Department, yet the planning failures of the Department consistently become a crisis for parents to solve.

This is causing untold stress for parents. Parents are left scrambling the day before school starts looking for lifts. The lack of buses is making schools less safe, with children jumping out of cars left, right and centre. These schools just do not have the capacity for such traffic every morning. It creates the impression that the Department only begins to think about school transport when the summer holidays begin, which is the very definition of "lastminute.com".

This year was no different. There was chaos in my community because of promises made by the Minister of State's colleagues. Families were given tickets with promises of a seat for every child but the promise proved to be empty. Despite these children having a ticket, there was no bus for them - it was effectively a ghost bus - and then, suddenly, these tickets were revoked. I have to ask the Minister of State directly whether he believes it is acceptable to make such promises to families only for their children to be left with no bus despite having a ticket? Who is accountable for these failures? Was it the Minister of State who sanctioned the issuing of these tickets or was it Bus Éireann? When questioned, Bus Éireann seemed to have completely buried its head in the sand and we got radio silence. When we contact the Minister of State's office, all we get is an automatic reply about how busy he is and he never actually responds. Does the Minister of State think that this total absence of accountability on his watch is acceptable? These families deserve a clear answer. Who is responsible for these tickets and when will we see sufficient school transport for schoolchildren across Kilkenny? I will not let this lie. Like other parents, I want answers. I want to know what irresponsible amadán gave the go-head to issue almost 80 tickets for a 52-seater bus. Come on.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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Up and down the country, but especially in rural areas, the inflexibility and lack of common sense of the Department and Bus Éireann constitute a real issue. I will ask the Minister of State two questions before I outline a case for him. Why is there separate vetting in every Bus Éireann office for drivers? I am thinking of where someone crosses over the Galway border from Mayo. Drivers often have to get up to ten separate Garda vettings. It does not make any sense when we have a shortage of drivers. I heard the Minister of State mention the fact that over-70s could only do short bus runs for Bus Éireann yet could drive hundreds of miles on private buses. This needs to be addressed quickly.

For over a year, I have been trying to resolve the dangerous situation on the Derryfadda and Boleyglass school route in Mayo. In 2021, a bus route that had serviced these areas for more than 40 years ceased operation due to the decline in student numbers. Since then, as in many rural areas, student numbers have risen and they meet the criteria to reinstate the route. However, Bus Éireann and the Department have failed to do so. Instead, parents and children are expected to travel to the nearest designated collection drop-off point, which happens to be located at the intersection of the R315 and the L1723, a busy commuter route with a significant blind spot on approach for other road users. This means that either children are expected to make their way there on foot along an already busy road with no cycle lanes or street lighting or their parents are expected to drive them down, pull in and wait to either drop off or collect them, further compromising road safety at this location. There has been a substantial back and forth between residents of this area and Bus Éireann, with Bus Éireann conceding the route meets the criteria to be reinstated, there being ten students along the road who would avail of the service. A bus is already in operation on this route for primary school pupils so why can the previously operated route at post-primary level not be reinstated? Some common sense needs to be applied to this situation, particularly now in the winter months where it can be dark and visibility on rural roads is significantly reduced, compromising safety. We are simply asking for the reinstatement of previously operated routes that served the students of Derryfadda and Boleyglass for 40 years. Why are we putting children in situations where their health and safety are compromised when it could be easily fixed? I have written to the Minister of State twice on this matter and would really appreciate a response.

Donna McGettigan (Clare, Sinn Fein)
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I want to talk about a worrying issue that affects parents and pupils in Shannon, Six-mile-bridge and Newmarket on Fergus in Clare when they are using school transport and the problems that come with the integration of our school transport system into the public service. Last year, the NTA made a significant investment in public transport in Shannon and the surrounding areas. This was very welcome and a step forward in resolving a lot of issues with the previous service. However, the integration of the long-established, reliable school transport service with this public service has raised alarm bells, especially for the parents who rely on it to get their children to school safely and on time. Parents like Aoife Keogh and Edel Rafferty have been tirelessly monitoring these issues day in and day out since last year and have seen first hand how the pilot scheme has failed to meet basic safety and logistical needs. One of the most pressing concerns is that drivers in the new transport pilot scheme are not Garda vetted. This is a clear and unacceptable discrepancy. All drivers in the dedicated school transport service are Garda vetted, as they should be, given that the majority of their passengers are minors. This issue was acknowledged by the authorities when Aoife and Edel raised it with them yet it remains unaddressed. There should be no difference in child safeguarding standards between the two services.

The logistics of these services are also unacceptable. Take the 316 route from Six-mile-bridge. Pupils on the first bus arrive almost an hour early for school while those on the second bus are arriving late. This means children are left hanging around or are forced to rush into school without enough time for the basic necessities like using their lockers, going to the bathroom or getting to breakfast club before class. This issue has also been raised several times. I have been sent several screenshots of the bus pick-up times being consistently late. On the Newmarket on Fergus service pupils are consistently forced to wait for up to an hour after school for a bus home. This is simply not good enough and we cannot continue to accept these inefficiencies and delays that put unnecessary pressure on our children. These services also do not have seatbelts, as city buses are being used in rural areas. There was also a promised bus stop outside the school that has not been delivered. Pupils are left on narrow footpaths and this lack of infrastructure and the failure to implement promised improvements has only added to the sense of frustration in this scheme. We are being told this pilot scheme could be rolled out as a national scheme, but how can we trust this when there are so many glaring issues with it that remain unresolved? The bottom line is our children should be able to access a transport system to and from school that is safe and reliable and so far that has not been the case here.

Joanna Byrne (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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I raised this issue directly with the Tánaiste last week and, due to the level of calls I have received from parents and guardians across Louth and east Meath, unfortunately I feel the need to speak on it again. Every year, the Government knows how many school buses are needed, how many seats are needed and what routes are required. Every year, we end up having the same discussion, highlighting the children in each of our constituencies, including those with special educational needs, let down by this Government. The Minister for education’s party has been in power since 2011, which is 14 years, but still she has failed to prepare, failed to act and has unfortunately failed to deliver for these children. The Government has to recognise that, when parents and guardians receive the school bus tickets, it lifts a huge weight off their minds. They believe their child’s place is secure on the school bus. The Government must then understand the anger when they receive emails giving very late notice that that place is no longer secure. In most cases, this happens on Friday afternoons with school due start on the Monday. Working parents have told me of the worry they felt when they realised they did not have time to make alternative arrangements for their children to get them to school. Parents of children with autism have told me how they rehearsed and prepared the morning school routine with their children to get them as ready as best they could for new school year, only to have that routine dashed.

We need a complete overhaul of the school transport scheme. Pilot programmes are not enough. The recommendations from the school transport review must be implemented. We need to ensure the service is reliable and robust in order to expand and cater for more and more children over the coming years, as both the Minister of State and the Minister have referenced. We waited three years for the school transport 2030 report to be published. It has been published almost two years now and many of the key recommendations have not been implemented by this Government. It needs to implement the recommendations in the report and let this be the last year the school transport scheme is such a calamity. There should be no more task forces or working groups, but a focus on delivering procurement processes on time and in turn delivering security, reliability and equality for the children who are left behind by this Government.

Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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The Minister of State does not need me to tell him the school transport system is in chaos across this State, but I will do it anyway. Families in my constituency of Waterford are being failed. The system is broken. Parents are exhausted, angry and frustrated. Children are left without a safe and reliable way to get to school. I have been raising this for months. I have written to the Minister of State and his colleague. I have written to Bus Éireann and met parents from every corner of Waterford. The stories I heard again this week are appalling and are the direct result of Government neglect. I was on a Zoom call last night with up to 20 parents from west Waterford alone. In Ballymacarbry, 11 children have been refused tickets to get a school bus to Dungarvan. Parents found out just before term began and appeals were dismissed with copy-and-paste replies. In fact, two of the 11 belatedly got a school bus ticket a couple of weeks after school had started back, with absolutely no rationale for why they were selected, and the other nine were not. Children have been stranded even though there are seats on the bus. In Ardmore, Grange and Kinsalebeg in west Waterford, families were told at the very last minute that their children had no seat, even after using the service for years. Now, children are cycling dark country roads, walking and leaving class early to catch a Local Link bus because the Minister of State’s Department will not implement its own review.

Families already struggling with the cost of living are in many cases forced to pay fees far in excess of a bus ticket for a private Bus Éireann service. In Lismore and the wider district around it, parents were issued tickets for stops miles away. I was at an event for Blackwater Community School last week with the Taoiseach where a fantastic new facility was opened, but the constant refrain from parents in attendance was that while it was fantastic, there were so many kids who could not get there in time to avail of the new facilities. In Grange and Pilltown, families were left in limbo until the day before schools reopened. They were scrambling to find out if their children had a seat. Others are still waiting. This is happening across the county, from Ballymacarbry to Dungarvan, in coastal villages and in the Comeraghs. It is the same dysfunction and distress, with poor or non-existent communication making matters worse. On top of that families of children with additional educational needs – the Minister of State will know this, as we raised it last week – who had to campaign to secure school places have been left high and dry with no transport. It is happening in Waterford and right across the State.

As was mentioned earlier, the 2030 report gave clear solutions but it is gathering dust. This dysfunction cannot be allowed to continue. Families deserve certainty, not chaos. Children deserve a seat on the bus and not another year of neglect. I ask the Government to please take action now.

Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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The issue of school transport is an annual upheaval we have across the country. As long as I have been here, this problem has come up every September. There is a particular route somewhere that was perfect last year and now it has changed because there are two fewer children on it and the bus has been withdrawn completely, or there is some other place where people thought they had enough children to get on the bus and did not. We have situations where we have people who have concessionary tickets. I have a situation where there are three children on concessionary tickets. One of them got a ticket on the bus, but how are the other two going to get to school? There are all sorts of craziness surrounding all this.

In fairness, a review was done and there are recommendations. If those recommendations were implemented, we would go a considerable distance towards resolving many of these problems, yet the Government continues to sit on its hands and not implement the very recommendations of a report it commissioned. That is one of the key problems we have here.

We also have the serious issue of parents trying to get to special classes in schools. The Minister of State is well aware of it. They are crisscrossing the country, over and back. A child from one parish cannot get into the special class in his or her school because it is full and the child then has to go ten, 15, 20 or maybe 30 miles away to get a class. The following year, a child from the parish the first child is going to now has a space opened up in the other one. We have this thing of children being taxied all over the place at a very high cost to the State because the Government has not enough provision of classes for autism, particularly, in many of these schools. We also have a situation with special schools. There are special schools in many of our areas, but in County Leitrim we do not have one at all and that is a problem. Children are leaving the county to go to Roscommon, Cavan and Longford. That needs to be resolved.

The solutions are there for the problem with school transport, yet the Government, for whatever reason, seems to not want to implement its own report. We can come here and discuss all this annually and come back to the same problem, but we need action and that action will require a small piece of investment compared with the big problem we have got. I ask the Minister of State to ensure that report is implemented.

Eoghan Kenny (Cork North-Central, Labour)
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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.

Mark Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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I thank Deputy Eoghan Kenny for affording me the opportunity to raise a number of matters. I welcome that the Minister of State is before us this evening. Like many Deputies here today, I have been inundated with queries from worried parents who are struggling to get answers from Bus Éireann on their children's school bus places. In many cases, parents were contacted a week or two before the start of the school term, and in a number of cases in my own county of Kildare two days before the school was due to start, and were informed that their school bus routes were not going ahead. This is despite the fact that many of these parents already had a school bus ticket in their possession. The question has already been posed, but I will pose it again. How can Bus Éireann issue a ticket for a bus that does not exist? Who is controlling the ghost buses? In many cases I have been told by Bus Éireann and the Minister of State's office that it came down to finding suitable contractors.

Yet, when I rang some of the contractors, whom I know and have worked with on many occasions, they told me they were actually waiting on Bus Éireann to sign the contract and not the other way around. That is the case for more than one route in Kildare. I am sure other colleagues in the House will have had the same experience.

While this is happening year in, year out, this year was particularly bad. Every year since I have been a public representative, school transport has been an issue. We have been promised reports and solutions but, unfortunately, this year has been the worst year I have ever had with school transport. I have been inundated with worried parents and, as has been continuously said here tonight, parents who have had to take time off work and unpaid holiday leave to get their children to school. It is simply not good enough.

I did not pick up at all the communications problems I and other public representatives have had with Bus Éireann in the Minister of State’s speech. It is simply not good enough that I have been asked to submit emails, with consent from parents, and yet, as I stand in front of the Minister of State today, I still have not received those replies. We need a dedicated line for Oireachtas Members. We need to have a line that will provide us with answers straight away, such as the line we have in the Passport Office. I refer to a line we could ring to give the details and get an answer as to what is actually happening, rather than waiting three to four months for a reply. As I said, in some cases, a reply has still not been forthcoming.

The Minister of State will know I am going to raise the issue of the Curragh secondary school with him once again. I have raised this as a Topical Issue, as well as with the Minister of State on a number of occasions. Some 29 to 40 children are using their parents’ cars, carpooling where they can, to get to a school on the Curragh. They are waiting for a new school to be built in Kildare town, but we still do not have a bus for them.

In the short time I have remaining, I wish to raise the issue of drivers over the age of 70 not being allowed to drive Bus Éireann buses. It seems madness that these same drivers can come in on a private bus and take those children to far-flung places, such as Donegal or Cork, without a problem yet they cannot drive 5 miles from their home into the school. What is wrong there?

Special schools have already been mentioned. I have raised this before and I will finish on this point. We have people in school buses and special taxis criss-crossing one another as they go from Athy, where I live, to Dublin and as people from Dublin bypass Athy on their way back to Kilkenny. It is about joined-up thinking. While I know the Minister of State is doing his best, we need more action. We need that joined-up thinking because too many families are suffering.

Marie Sherlock (Dublin Central, Labour)
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Obviously, the Minister of State is hearing a lot of stories today about the failures within the school transport scheme. Every year at this time of the year, we sound like a broken record relaying these stories to the Minister of the day. As my colleague, Deputy Wall, relayed, it seems this year is the worst year we have seen in a long time.

I wish to relay the story of Jade Black and her son, Rocco, to the Minister of State. Rocco is 16 and attends St. Michael’s House. They live in the north inner city in the middle of my constituency of Dublin Central. Four days before returning to school at the end of August, they were told the school transport provider was gone. There was no proper explanation. “Sorry for your inconvenience” was the phrasing in the email. The person driving the taxi for this child had been there since 2018. Jade is able to drive her son every day to St. Michael’s House. She also has to take another child with her, who lives close by. That child is reliant on a wheelchair, but the car cannot take a wheelchair, resulting in the child having to go through the indignity of getting into a car without her wheelchair. While she can walk a few steps, she has to go through that every day. We are into our fourth week and there are no notions as to when we are going to see any change. What I wish to convey to the Minister of State is that Jade, after 17 years out of the workforce, was due to start a job on 1 September. That mother has had to put off starting that job because of the failures of the State and the failure of the school transport scheme.

Last week, I brought it up with the Taoiseach and he was talking about work being the greatest way out of poverty, but this woman cannot work because of the failure of the State. We need to see real action and an explanation. We need that service reinstated as soon as possible for the children attending St. Michael’s House, and indeed for all the other special schools around the country.

Peter Cleere (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the statements today on school transport. As a rural TD, the challenges families across Carlow and Kilkenny experience with school transport come across my desk every day. I wish to make a couple of quick points. The first point relates to the importance of accessibility. Every single child in this State deserves access to safe and reliable transport to and from school. It is non-negotiable. Not only is it absolutely vital for the students, but it is also imperative for their parents who are sometimes under ferocious pressure to arrange their kids to be dropped to and from school while they are trying to go about their daily busy lives.

While urban areas might have more transport options, and more power to them, there are serious challenges that have to be addressed in rural communities regarding school transport. This year alone I have come across cases in Ballyragget, Lisdowney, Borris, St. Mullins, Mullinavat, Listerlin, Mooncoin, Dunnamaggin, Gowran, Dungarvan, The Rower, Graiguenamanagh, Castlecomer, Ballyhale and Knockmoylan, to mention just a few. The school transport scheme is a lifeline for many families in these areas but we have to do better and we have to do more.

It is a specific measure in the programme for Government to include an additional 100,000 students by 2030. I welcome this vision. While it would be fantastic to see, in order to achieve 100,000 more places, additional funding will be required. I note and acknowledge in the Minister of State’s speech earlier that more than €500 million was allocated in 2024, which is a significant increase on previous years’ funding. I appeal to the Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, and the Minister, Deputy McEntee, to fight as hard as possible to increase funding for rural Ireland and for rural families both across Carlow and Kilkenny and nationally.

I also acknowledge the significant increase in the numbers using the school transport scheme, rising from 120,000 a couple of years ago to 178,000 today. There is a reason the school transport system is so successful in terms of its use and numbers, but we have to ensure every child has access to it and there are no barriers.

My next point concerns drivers over the age of 70. I cannot understand how a driver over 70 years of age is ineligible to drive a school bus under the Bus Éireann rules, but the school can ring that same bus contractor and the same driver can bring those kids to swimming or a GAA match without any problem at all. It beggars belief. While I know there is a specific measure in the programme for Government to carry out an independent assessment on the feasibility of removing the exclusion of drivers aged over 70 from the school transport scheme, this has to be done immediately. We want to get 100,000 additional places. The average bus size has capacity for 50 people, meaning an extra 2,000 buses and 2,000 drivers are needed. We are at full employment in this country. We need to give those people over the age of 70, who have something to offer and are happy to make a contribution and give back, the opportunity to do so. We need to fast-track that.

Sometimes, particularly in the context of rural school transport, it feels like we are being punished for living in a rural area. That is not right. In the little time I have left, I will speak about the bus in Ballyhale and Knockmoylan. I thank the Minister of State for his incredible hard work on this particular project and the fact that there is an additional bus on a pilot scheme. We know that the funding is there for it, which is brilliant, but the challenge is to get the actual bus, the service and the driver in place. I implore the Minister of State once again today to do everything he can with Bus Éireann to fast-track this for the families of Knockmoylan and for the kids attending the school in Ballyhale. My good friend and previous colleague, Bobby Aylward, campaigned for this for many years. It is high time that it is sorted. I thank the Minister of State for his hard work in that regard.

I wish to speak quickly on the ability to change a school bus route. I hear regularly from families and students that the bus route can be changed every now and again with no notice and that it is something that does not suit. There has to be a mechanism in that regard. It is frustrating and difficult getting answers from Bus Éireann when it comes to the changing of bus routes or slight changes that would be sustainable and good for the country.

Can the application process be looked at a little earlier? Waiting until the eleventh hour to get word two or three days before a child is going back to school is, to put it simply, not good enough. Is there a way that we could open and close the application process earlier so that parents know whether they are getting a ticket? If they knew in June or earlier in the year, it would give them the chance to put alternative arrangements in place or seek funding to get additional buses where required.

That is something that really needs to be looked at. If the process is started earlier, we could let the kids and their families know in plenty of time to make alternative arrangements or to arrange additional buses, if required.

I agree with Deputy Wall on the dedicated helpline. It is a fantastic idea because when we get in contact and get the consent forms, the speed at which we get replies from Bus Éireann is, at best, below average, and I am being kind saying that.

Malcolm Byrne (Wicklow-Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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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.

Erin McGreehan (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister of State for being here. School transport problems, unfortunately, are an annual event and we can rely on them happening every year. I meet frustrated parents. We all get emails and phone calls about stranded children, no certainty and a remarkably unfair lottery system. The majority of children still do not get access to any bus route. The children of Louth and every county deserve a school transport system that works and is reliable, fair and safe. We have heard many reports this evening, as well as in the media and in our inboxes, of routes not operating, children left stranded and families waiting for promised services. These are not minor glitches; they have a huge impact on families.

I thank the Minister of State for working on all our requests over the summer and in the past few weeks on school transport. It has made a difference but not every problem is fixed. In 2025-26, the scheme is projected to provide transport for more than 180,000 students. This is about 19% of all enrolments. Costs have doubled since 2019 from €219 million to €509 million. Obviously, there is demand. There are fee waivers and growing obligations for contributing but we still have the same percentage of students able to avail of school buses as in 2019. I really want to look at that. If we are spending double and it is still around 20% of students using school transport, we are not doing what we need to do.

There are high fees for families. Families are willing to pay them and I acknowledge some fees are paid but the eligibility criteria are very restrictive. The distance and nearest school criteria do not work for every family. I am particularly thinking of north Louth. Children in Omeath and Carlingford do not go to their nearest school, or to their second nearest school, which would be in Dundalk. Many go to Bush Post Primary School and there is chaos at that school every morning and evening. It is a nightmare. Most parents drive to collect their children because, number one, there are no buses and, number two, it is unsafe to allow a child to walk to the school. The safe routes to school programme works to a certain degree but for many families the car is the only option. It is the only option I have to send my children to secondary school and indeed primary school.

There are pilot projects going on around the country but I agree with Deputy Malcolm Byrne. We need to get rid of these pilots. We know the problems and have been dealing with them for years. We need to kick off the shackles and actually deal with the problems. In County Louth, we had cancellations of buses in Clogherhead and Collon days before schools started. Parents were getting the word that their children was not getting the lotto ticket for the buses. It leaves children stranded and parents unable to get to work. It puts worry and stress on families to not be able to get children to school. Even when parents have the ability and will to pay, they are not getting their children to school. We must get the reviews and recommendations processed and working straight away. The evidence supports lowering eligibility distances, removing the nearest school constraints and expanding the services. We need timelines. Pilots are grand but we must not be stuck in perpetual trial mode. Capacity is a huge problem in rural areas, as are availability of buses and driver shortages.

I think everybody in this room would agree that not allowing over-70s to drive a school bus is a ludicrous rule that needs to be changed. I have an awful lot more to say but my time is up.

Cathy Bennett (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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I disagree with Deputy Byrne. As far as I can see, school transport is getting worse every year. Every year I am contacted by parents whose children have been utterly failed by this Government. With little to no notice parents are left to shoulder the burden of attempting to reschedule work and other commitments to deal with the Government's failures while children see buses full of their schoolmates and classmates passing by their homes with no space for them. However, there are spaces. Tickets have been allocated to children who do not use the bus, so the spaces lie idle and other children who need the bus cannot avail of them. Families have endured three years of utter chaos while the Department has conducted a review into the school transport scheme, which was eventually published 19 months ago. A key recommendation of that report was that from September of this year, the nearest school criteria would be reduced, but that has not happened yet. We have seen a handful of pilot studies with no meaningful change. As a result, children across this State have been denied places on their local school bus.

This is a mess of the Minister's making. She has implemented a review and her response to the shambles that she is overseeing amounts to an excuse that contracts were cancelled at the last minute and a sop of throwing money at parents, by the way of an apology, to make alternative arrangements.

Why was such a volume of contracts cancelled at the last minute? Why is the Minister signing contracts to facilitate chaos? One potential reason that I have been informed of is that workers on these routes do not have good working conditions. For example, workers will lose wages on the day of the Presidential election because no children are going to school. Truthfully, there seems to be an issue within the Department of contracting workers on poorer terms than might be expected. The Department fosters financial uncertainty among workers.

Parents do not want compensation to make alternative arrangements. They want their Government and Ministers to do their jobs to ensure that every child is allocated a school seat on the bus. Please get your act together as soon as possible, and definitely before next year or we will go through this chaos again.

David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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The school transport system is simply not up to standard. As previous speakers said, every year in the first week or second week back after the summer recess we are dealing with the same issues. In fact, all of our constituency offices are inundated in the months of July and August, but particularly August, with parents who are frustrated with the eligibility criteria, the concessionary criteria, the fact their child has not got a place or the fact they have not got the ticket, or they are waiting for their ticket to come. It is frustration after frustration. It was interesting to hear some of the Government representatives. Deputy Cleere was one of them. He said the Minister was doing a great job, but then listed nearly every town and village in Kilkenny where there are problems. I am not sure what great job the Minister is doing. He said the Minister was doing a great job and that all we need is a bus and a driver. I would have thought it was fairly obvious that for children we need buses and drivers. If we do not have buses and drivers, then we do not have school places. Rather than giving the Minister a pat on the back on one hand and then saying there are problems in every part of his constituency, we need the Government to implement the recommendations in the report it commissioned, most of which have not been implemented.

In my constituency of Waterford, I was inundated with calls from the east of the county, from Dunmore East, to the west of the county, from families in Lismore where children did not have places, or whose tickets were late coming. In almost every part of rural Waterford there are problems every single year. It is very often the same families coming to us. One email I reviewed during the summer said that for three years in a row there have been problems. For three years in a row, we have been trying to help and assist through our offices, but it should not take people having to go to their local TD to try to raise issues with Bus Éireann or with the Department to get it sorted. It is not beyond us to have a properly functioning school transport system, but it seems to be beyond this Government.

I am afraid that I am not going to give the Minister a false pat on the back and say that the Government is doing a great job. It simply is not. The system is not up to standard. We need serious investment and reform of the system if we want to make it fit for purpose.

Jen Cummins (Dublin South Central, Social Democrats)
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I am glad to have the opportunity to speak about school transport, but in particular the urgent issue of accessibility for children with special educational needs. The transport system we have was set up in 1967 to bring children to school safely and reliability. It is managed by Bus Éireann on behalf of the Department of Education and Youth. However, it not working for every child. We see this every year and their families are let down at the last minute. As the Minister outlined, this scheme supports nearly one in five children. However, it is just not working for every single one of them. For children with special educational needs - and the Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, has a special responsibility in this area - school transport is not just about getting from A to B. It is their lifeline and allows them to attend the school that is equipped to meet their needs. This is often in schools that are not in their own community, so transport is so important. It gives parents the confidence that their child will get there and back safely and allows families to hold down jobs and manage their daily lives.

There are so many children using school transport. There are 17,500 children with additional needs at primary level and 3,200 at post-primary level. A huge number of people are using that service but, in many cases, these are provided by taxis rather than buses. In fact, we now have 2,700 taxis operating as part of the school transport fleet. Why are we relying on taxis to bring children to school? We are seeing yet another public service being funnelled into the private sector.

As Deputies outlined, every August things happens, in that contracts are not secured, drivers are not found and routes are cancelled. This is a failure of forward planning. In Dublin South-Central, there are a number of families who contacted me over the past number of weeks at their wits' end. There are children whose buses have been cancelled at the last minute leaving families in absolute upheaval. One child cannot get to a school outside of his community by way of school transport. The schools in the vicinity of where he lives are not suitable for his needs, so has to travel outside of it. However, given that school transport is not available means he cannot get there by such means and it puts a huge burden on his family with them having to juggle their already busy days to get him to school. As I said last week in the Dáil, there is a child who has missed so many days of schools that the Educational Welfare Service should have been involved. However, it was not because his parents were not bringing him or he was not bothered but it was because school transport let him down.

What is at stake when transport is withdrawn is not just a missed bus but it is the denial of an education, which children have a right to, and parents are forced to give up work. There is a trust being broken between the State and families. Let that not be forgotten.

The Department's review in 2024 recognised many of the problems, such as the removal of the nearest school rule for routes, reducing distance thresholds and expanding the scheme to tens of thousands of children. As Deputies already mentioned, there are a lot of pilots. We have said several times in this Chamber that we need to get over the use of pilots for everything in this country. Other countries do things very well. We do not have to reinvent the wheel and do a pilot. Let us look at what other countries do well and take that opportunity.

Regarding climate targets, there must be a 51% cut in emissions by 2030 and net zero by 2050. School transport has the potential to make a real contribution to this by reducing the number of children driven to school in private cars. Bus Éireann has committed to making half of its fleet zero emissions by 2030. However, with 94% of the school transport with private contractors, they do not have the same requirements and that will slow things up.

If the Government is serious about inclusion and if we are serious about equal access to education, then school transport cannot be treated as an afterthought. It must be seen as an essential infrastructure like classrooms, teachers and SNAs. It means that the routes are secured well in advance. It means dedicated provision for children with special educational needs. It means planning for sustainability, not simply reacting to problems.

Perhaps the question should be asked of the Department. The Department of Education and Youth's expertise is in education and youth work. Would school transport be a better fit under the Department of Transport as it is the expert for that? It seems that it is such a stretch for the Department of education and it is another layer of difficulty that perhaps that needs to be considered.

I do not have all of the answers but I have plenty of questions. I know my colleagues also have the same.

Liam Quaide (Cork East, Social Democrats)
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Enrolment in our school bus system has become an annual crisis, involving huge stress and uncertainty for many families. It is a stand-out example of the Government's inability or unwillingness to get the basics right for families. What should be a straightforward service has become an epic fiasco of poor, disjointed planning and crude restrictions, with so much unnecessary worry and hassle for those families caught up in it.

Across Cork East, the frustration is acute. From Youghal to Cobh to Mitchelstown, I have been inundated with calls and emails from families who are at the end of their tethers trying to access school bus places for their children. The system is both spectacularly haphazard and mercilessly rigid. No grace is shown to families who are unfamiliar with the system or who missed the deadline for applications and are now left stranded. This will disproportionately impact families in disadvantaged social circumstances. I am thinking in particular of two children I know of in Cloyne who were refused places due to late applications. Their parents have no access to a car. These children will now have to take the unreliable public bus home at 6.15 p.m., which will be particularly punitive during winter. Some other examples of the fallout from the system include a family based in Clonmult who were allocated a route that is too far from their home to be a feasible option. Yet, a school bus on a route that has not been offered to them passes directly by their home.

I am also advocating for an autistic, visually impaired child who has been offered a special school placement on the other side of Midleton from where they live but who has not been allocated transport to get to that school. I am representing two children in Leamlara who live closer to Carrigtwohill than Midleton. They have been assigned concessionary status for the school bus, which means have been put to the back of the queue and are not guaranteed places. This happened on the basis they live closer to Carrigtwohill and have chosen St. Colman's in Midleton for their secondary education. However, St. Colman's is their nearest DEIS school, yet that has not being taken into account.

This is an absurd state of affairs. These children have been granted placement in a school on the basis of disadvantage yet are being excluded from accessing transport to that school. It is not rocket science to design a school bus system that is joined-up, meets the needs of all students within reason and has some degree of flexibility and humanity built into it for families who do not have their applications in on time because they are new to the system or find themselves in difficult social circumstances. The Department really needs to get a grip on this issue.

Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats)
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Year in, year out in Wicklow we have problems with the school bus service. It usually happens two or three days before school starts, when the emails start to arrive from Bus Éireann to tell parents - who have already paid for and secured tickets for their children and made plans on the basis that they will have a way to get to school - that, for whatever reason, there is no bus available. This is usually because there is no bus driver, the contractor has pulled the bus or that a bus could not be secured in the first place. It is always left until the very last minute and this leaves families absolutely reeling and trying to get on top of how they will get their children to school.

I have had constituents who could not go to work. Others had to leave work or could not take up job offers because the school bus service in Wicklow was so bad. It was March of last year before some of the routes were up and running. The school year was nearly over at that stage. This happens year in, year out; it is not a new problem.

When this issue was raised previously, we were told there was going to be a review of the school bus system and that all aspects of it would be looked at. I had a look at the review that was carried out. There are three phases in the report. It seems that phase three is the one that applies. In that context, the report states, "Phase 3 involves an examination of issues around eligibility criteria, scheme performance, scheme expenditure and the potential for scheme integration." Someone in the Department forgot to complete the report because there is no mention of scheme performance at any stage in the document. It is mentioned once in the introduction, on page 5, and is not mentioned anywhere ever again. In the context of a scheme with which there are so many problems, surely performance and how the scheme currently operates should have been the number one thing the Department looked at. The Department should surely have stated that if it wanted to make matters better, it needed to identify the problems and challenges that exist. It would appear that this was never done.

I am going to put my constituency hat on and say that Wicklow is one of those counties that is particularly impacted every year. Will the Minister of State-----

John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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The Deputy is over time

Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats)
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-----have the Department carry out a review analysis of the school transport system in Wicklow? If it does so, it will identify where all of the challenges and barriers are. I reckon that those challenges and barriers apply cross the country as well.

John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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Deputy Rice is next.

Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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Leas-Cheann Comhairle, I will go first if that is okay.

John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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That is okay.

Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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I welcome the opportunity to speak on this issue. There is probably very little I can say that is going be news to the Minister of State at this point. Many Members have covered, quite comprehensively, the structural flaws facing the transport scheme as it stands. It is probably difficult to comprehend any sort of acknowledgement that the scheme is getting better when it is a problem that the Minister of State and the Minister have inherited. This is a problem of the previous Government's making. When the Government announced free school transport for all without having the ability to back that up with capacity or the infrastructure to deliver it, what happened was that demand was created. Other Members have spoken about the level of increase in the use of tickets over the past couple of years. That is simply because, overnight, an announcement was made that there would be free transport for everybody. That led to children who had been using the system day in and day out for years lost their tickets to those who successfully applied for tickets and who have not used them. I cannot understate the frustration of people whose children do not get tickets and who, when they go to collect them from school, see ghost buses that are either half or one third empty driving by because other students are not using their bus tickets to the extent that their children would.

If there is a possibility of carrying out some form of check of the scheme, I implore the Minister of State to do that. If people are not using their tickets, there are many others who will use them. We must do better. The Minister of State knows that. The Government knows that the system is deeply flawed. This is the manifestation of making announcements without the ability to back them up.

Other speakers listed town after town. It is safe to assume that every school community in Kildare has been affected by this issue. We have communities right throughout the county that are impacted. I am not going list them off.

John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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You should conclude, Deputy

Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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There are some children who have tickets for buses while their siblings do not. There is a real issue with school places. If children cannot get into their closest schools, they might have to travel 10 km, 15 km or 20 km to get a place in another school. However, they are not eligible for school transport. If we can join matters up, the scheme has the potential to work. Right now, however, it is quite dysfunctional.

Pádraig Rice (Cork South-Central, Social Democrats)
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The problems with school transport are not new. If anything, this has become an annual fiasco. My colleagues Deputies Whitmore and Cummins have been raising this matter and calling for a restructuring of the scheme for a long period. In the time afforded to me, I want to refer to the consequences for some of the families in my constituency of Cork South-Central. Several families in Cork have contacted me and described their real frustration about the fact that they are continuously being advised to contact the local Cork office using an online web form. These are families who are desperately in need of answers, who want to speak to somebody and who are being expected to wait for responses through the website. They have urgent queries and the least they deserve is to be able to talk to somebody directly to try to resolve some of the problems. I would like that to be looked at.

The failure of the scheme is having real consequences for families. There is a parent of a child with additional needs who has been back in school for over a month without the transport they were approved for in June. These parents are alternating taking time off work in order that they can get their child to school. These are families who are missing out on time at work in order to get their children to school. They are already under severe financial pressure because they are paying privately for therapies and services for their children that the State is refusing to provide. Time and time again, the State is failing children with additional needs and their families. They deserve better and need better supports. The lack of school transport available to children with additional needs is just an example of this.

I would like the Minister of State to intervene and urgently respond to the issues outlined in the debate this evening. I would also like to see a full review into the ongoing issues with the scheme in order that they will not continue to be repeated year after year and that we can resolve this and have a better system in place for children and families right across the country.

It is really important that we get to the bottom of this and find solutions for families.

Keira Keogh (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister of State for being here. I welcome the fact that now over 170,000 children are availing of the school transport system, which is a huge increase on the 120,000 who previously availed of it. I also welcome that in the programme for Government we have committed to having another 100,000 avail of it by 2030. I understand the difficulty we have in recruiting bus drivers. At the same time, however, we have to acknowledge that the system is just too rigid. Probably only 2% of those who use the system are experiencing challenges with it. However, that 2% includes parents are stressed out of their minds, who are dealing with uncertainty and who are extremely anxious, from both a practical and a financial perspective. This affects rural families in particular. We need to start dealing with the system earlier in the summer in order that we avoid panic later in the summer and in order to help parents who are struggling to budget and who fine out late in August whether they have to pay or not.

We need more funding and better communication. When people are contacting their TDs, it is because the system is not working for them and they are struggling. Better communication would really ease the situation, as would more transparency around who is getting concessionary tickets and more flexibility, especially by means of the use of local knowledge. We can look at this in the context of the nearest and second-nearest school rule. The system is too rigid and does not take into account local knowledge and feeder schools. I think of students in Glenhest outside Newport who were advised by the system that St. Gerald's is their nearest school. Nobody in Glenhest goes to St. Gerald's in Castlebar because the Sacred Heart School in Westport, Sancta Maria College in Louisburgh and Rice College in Westport are the feeder schools for Glenhest. I will be selfish and take this opportunity to congratulate my school, the Sacred Heart School, on its centenary this week.

Another challenge of the nearest school rule is not taking into account that we live in a modern Ireland and that parents are working in different towns. School preferences and subject interests need to be taken into account. For example, some schools do not teach music. A gifted student who loves music may want to go to a school where it is taught. We have to keep siblings together. Some secondary schools do not offer autism classrooms. I know of a set of twins, one of whom will miss out on school transport if he goes to the same school as his twin. We need to respect tradition and keep flexibility in mind.

One mum who reached out to me said, "not knowing until the beginning of August just weeks before the school year starts whether you will need €75 or €800 to cover transport costs is so nerve-wracking". This comes into play when we look at Sancta Maria College. We have three buses leaving Westport to go out to that school. There is a huge tradition of children attending Sancta Maria College in Louisburg. For one child, attending Sancta Maria College costs €850 per year. For two children, the cost is €1,450. If you have three children, it will cost €1,800. Again, flexibility and local knowledge could be applied in this instance. If three buses are going from one town to another, even if it is not the nearest or second-nearest school, surely we should try to support people in the relevant communities.

I spoke about transparency. In the context of concessionary tickets, I am aware of an instance where ten people were on a waiting list for concessionary tickets. There were nine tickets available. Those responsible for making the decision in respect of allocating those tickets said that in the interests of fairness they would pull the names out of a hat. That did not take into account the fact that some families do not have cars or that there might not be safe footpaths or drop-off points in some areas. I heard another Deputy refer to disadvantaged families in this regard. Pulling names out of a hat may seem fair but that is not really the case when you take people's circumstances into account.

The final point I was to make relates to children with additional needs or those who are disabled who avail of bus transport. We really need to look at clear guidelines around simple things like food. If you have autistic children, a lot of the time their condition can often be accompanied by restrictive eating. Making sure a child is fed going out the door might mean sending them to school with a slice of toast. In that context, we sometimes hear that there is no eating or drinking allowed on buses. I reiterate what I said last week about providing further training and support for bus escorts who often have to deal with distressed behaviours. Let us put families and rural Ireland first and let us move away from the rigid rules.

Catherine Callaghan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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I will add to what Deputy Keogh and many others have said about school transport in rural areas. The same thing seems to happen every year. I commend the Minister of State on the work he has done. The additional 8,000 bus seats that have been delivered this year are very welcome. Many of the difficulties I have dealt with across Carlow and Kilkenny relate to the allocation of concessionary tickets. There is a requirement to have a bit more transparency as to how the allocation of these tickets is decided upon. Many distraught parents came to me in the week school was returning because they discovered that their child who had a ticket all their school life is starting leaving certificate year and no longer has one. This causes stress and turmoil within a household. I know parents who had to take annual leave in order to get their children to school. The Minister of State has mentioned this matter, and I applaud his ambition. However, I would love if we could ensure that, from next year and going forward, there would be more of an alignment when it comes to students being informed about their school places and about whether they have places on school transport. That is going to be really important.

Deputy Keogh mentioned is the over-70s rule that exists in Bus Éireann regarding drivers. As a former SNA, I found out to my surprise this year that this rule also applies to people driving cars or taxies who bring children with special educational needs to school. A 71-year-old cannot drive a taxi on behalf of Bus Éireann to school but he or she can drive a particular child to swimming from his or her school later the same day. I would like that rule to be changed by Bus Éireann and the rule that prevents over-70s driving buses.

It would be good if we could get a quicker response in the context of the allocation of additional seats. Let us look at it, if we can, on a multi-annual basis, even though I appreciate that is not all down to the Department of education or, indeed, Bus Éireann. We need engagement with the schools. We also needs parents to decide quicker which school they would like their child to go to, particularly when it comes to secondary school, in order that we have a lengthier timeline when it comes to arranging the provision of school buses and bus tickets.

Children and families in rural areas are further disadvantaged because we do not have the option of a public transport system. However, I wish to recognise what the State does provide. It provides, on the whole, a seat for every child on a bus to their nearest secondary school. That is to be applauded, but it does not reflect what modern school-going patterns are like. There needs to be an evolution in this regard. Having said that, I recognise what the Department of education and the State provide.

I know parents who have been trying to get buses for the routes between Ballon and Bunclody, Rathvilley and Tullow and Grange and Knockbeg. We have been asking for additional capacity. I am glad to say that additional capacity was provided on the route from Grange, or Killerrig Cross, to Knockbeg, but parents did not know about that until the bus and the second bus departed on Monday last. They were still driving their children to school. The bus tickets were issued after the bus had already come into service. I am very grateful to the Department and to the Minister of State, with whom I engaged several times regarding that bus route. I am thankful for that additional capacity, as are the parents. They no longer need to take annual leave in order to bring their children to school.

To sum up, I would like to see a follow-through. I once again applaud the Minister of State's ambition to ensure that, subject to resources, a much closer alignment between students securing school places and the decisions on their applications for school transport. I would love to see the over-70s rule being looked at by Bus Éireann. I would also like to see the deadlines for applications and payment happening earlier in the school year. If the latter happens, families would not be faced with the avoidable stress and uncertainty about how their children are going to get to school and how hard-pressed working parents are going to facilitate dropping their children off and collecting them from school.

I thank the Minister of State for all the work he is doing. Please continue with the ambition and particularly with a further focus on rural school transport.

Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister of State and the Department for the work they are doing in this area. The numbers availing of school transport have increased to 172,000 this year from 149,000 in 2022-2023. The number for people with special educational needs has gone from 18,000 to 21,500. It is not easy to increase services like that because, as a lot of speakers mentioned, there is demand for the vehicles and for the drivers. That is a challenge and how we deal with it into future is something we need to look at very carefully.

It is important we acknowledge the work done by the Department, school management, Bus Éireann, the contractors employed, the drivers and the parents who all co-operate in delivering this service. The Minister was talking about the roll out of the pilot scheme. My colleague, Deputy Eoghan Kenny, referred to Rahan. Very much so over the last two years parents there have been looking for school transport because it is a difficult road to travel. There is a large number of cars and it is a difficult area to manoeuvre. I am delighted to hear progress is being made on this. I know the Minister is doing everything possible in dealing with that issue in relation to Rahan. It is a good pilot project to take on. There are huge benefits if it is put into place. Bus Éireann has been working with the school, the board of management and with the Department on bringing Rahan in as a pilot project.

In the constituency I serve, we have major challenges at times - for instance, getting bus services in the upper Glanmire area, and to Carrignavar. There are a lot of people in the Glenville area who want to go to Fermoy and people in the Whitechurch area who want to go to Blarney. There are all sorts of challenges in different areas. In fairness, in dealing with those, it is difficult to meet all the needs and the challenges, but I do think every effort is being made to do that. The only way of really dealing with it is to try to increase the level of transport available, and that we work that much harder over the next two to three years to try to make sure we meet the targets we have set.

One of the problems is discretionary seats, in particular where families have them for two years and then find in year three, four or five the seat is no longer available. I know one family where one of the parents was going through cancer treatment and three of their children who had concessionary seats for the last number of years suddenly lost them. This posed huge challenges for the family. One member of the family was trying to hold down a job while another family member was in healthcare. At times no allowance is made for that. One is going into a lottery system. We need to look at that more carefully. Where a concessionary ticket is granted, we must do everything possible to ensure it is continued because families work around that. They believe it will continue for the number of years the child is going to that school.

Another big issue is around the time decisions are made. If that could be brought forward to an earlier date, it would be extremely beneficial to families as it would allow them to plan. If they had concessionary tickets and for some reason were no longer able to get them, they could plan for it. Now families are finding out at a very late stage and they are having to make alternative plans.

It is important we progress the pilot schemes but also make sure the reports are available at an early stage to see how they can be further expanded. We have made a lot of progress over the past number of years. It is important we continue with that, that we continue to make sure our children get to school safely, that we reduce the number of motor vehicles and that we use buses rather having than a huge number of cars arriving outside the school at the one time.

John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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I ask the Deputy to conclude.

Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister for the work being done. Hopefully, we will see success in the pilot projects that have been started.

Fionntán Ó Súilleabháin (Wicklow-Wexford, Sinn Fein)
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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.

Louis O'Hara (Galway East, Sinn Fein)
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The school transport scheme is an annual crisis for families, students and bus drivers who are left in the dark at a time when they should be focused on the return to school. One case that really highlights the chaos of this scheme is that of a man living near Loughrea whose two children attend a school in Ballinasloe. They have been left without school transport since the school year started. They attend the school in question to access speech and language supports. While a school bus has been sanctioned, delays in procuring this bus means the father has had to be out of work for the past number of weeks to bring them to and from school. There is already a school bus that travels from Loughrea to Ballinasloe and passes the school the children attend but we are still waiting to be told whether another stop at this school can be added so the children can avail of the existing bus route. The communication to date it has been abysmal, as it is in almost every case. That man may be forced to take his children out of the school if this drags on for any longer. I ask that the Department sees sense and ensures a proper solution to this particular case as soon as possible.

There have been many other examples recently of children with additional needs locally being left without school transport. St. Teresa's in Ballinasloe was one such example. Parents felt they had to highlight their cases publicly to get a resolution. That is not acceptable. The Minister's Department should be moving heaven and earth to ensure children with additional needs have school transport services from the very beginning of the school year.

On the school transport scheme more broadly, I have submitted questions to the Minister of State regarding the development of a digital school bus pass. I have made many queries about bus tickets not being posted or being posted to the wrong address. Surely a digital pass is something that can be put in place in 2025. The school transport 2030 review has not been fully implemented. There has been no change to the nearest school distance criteria. Children who are being excluded from the scheme are being forced to walk dangerous roads to their pick-up points and there have not been serious efforts to bring more drivers into the system.

I appreciate that the school transport scheme is an incredibly complex undertaking but I ask that Government prioritise reforming the scheme so it can adapt to local needs and be fit for the 21st century.

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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I raised a number of local school transport issues in the Dublin West constituency on Tuesday. They were Gaelscoil Thulach na nÓg, Catherine McAuley National School and St. Peter's College, Dunboyne. I acknowledge that the Gaelscoil Thulach na nÓg issue has been resolved and the bus has been put in place. I appreciate that. On St. Peter's College, Dunboyne, we do not have a resolution there yet. We have children travelling from the Hollystown area to that school. It is in a different county and there is an issue because the children there attend a primary school that is also in a different county. It is in County Meath but it is the one closest to them and that is the only school they are in a catchment area for to get into secondary school. Then there is an issue of a bus crossing a boundary.

On the Catherine McAuley National School, it is a reading school. It is beside the Minister of State's own Department and I am sure he knows it. I am sorry - it is not, it is beside the Department of disability. That is a school that children travel towards from all over Dublin and there has been a major issue this week. There was no bus on Monday. On Tuesday, a bus was provided but there was quite a serious incident on that bus. This morning, children were travelling for about two or two and a quarter hours on that bus. These are primary school children. Traffic is bad in Dublin in the morning but it does not take two and a quarter hours to get from Dublin 15 to Baggot Street. This is a situation where we are trying to get 11 kids, all from different houses, onto the one route and it is just not sustainable. Could we please look at halving that into two smaller buses and not have kids on buses for two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening? It is just not sustainable. These are young kids. Some of them need movement breaks or the toilet. It is a long time to make any young kid wait to go across the city. I ask that the Minister of State look at the situation with the Catherine McAuley National School.

I want to flag two other situations where there is no prospect of a bus this year, the first relating to children from the Ashtown-Pelletstown area. That is a relatively new development in between Dublin's Fingal area and the Dublin City Council area along the Royal Canal. Many of the kids there cannot get a local school and are now attending Coolmine Community School in Blanchardstown. There is no provision for a bus there. The parents and teachers asked for it. There will be more children next year and the following year having to make that journey. I again ask that we look at that situation with children travelling from Pelletstown to Coolmine Community School.

I raise the issue of children who are living in the Tyrrelstown and Hollystown areas but having to travel to Ériu Community College. The reason they have to travel is that Ériu Community College is to be moved to their area. It is being moved right across my constituency from its current temporary location to a new permanent location. It is a mad idea. I think it is a bad idea. I have campaigned against it locally but nevertheless it is going ahead. Its new geographic location has now become its catchment area and kids are expected to travel right across Dublin 15 to achieve that. That might not seem like a big deal but there are no public transport links that go across that particular direction from the Ongar area to the Tyrrelstown area. There are no public transport links at all. The kids live here, the school is over here, and there are absolutely no links and again, a bus has not been put in place. This would not need to be there forever; it would just need to be there while we are in this transitional phase and I ask that the Minister of State look at the situation with Ériu Community College.

There are a lot of issues in Dublin 15. I know one often comes across these issues in rural constituencies but there has been a very significant number of issues in areas in my constituency this year and I ask the Minister of State to address the schools in question.

Séamus Healy (Tipperary South, Independent)
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A fit-for-purpose school transport service is absolutely essential. The current system operates about 8,200 vehicles on 10,600 routes. This year, it distributed 142,000 tickets and aims to cater for another 100,000 students by 2030. However, there are recurring difficulties with the scheme every year. This year, some parents were told at the last minute that no service was in place even though they had got tickets already. With reference to an example from my own constituency, children with disabilities obviously have a right to education and they face a lot of hurdles in achieving that right - assessment delays, delays in getting a special unit or special school place, and transport difficulties in accessing the school. At the start of this school year, there was no school bus service for students from the Ardfinnan-Newcastle area of south Tipperary travelling to special schools in Cashel. Year after year, Bus Éireann blames the lack of drivers and contractors for these problems. These are problems that should have been anticipated and contingency plans should have been put in place.

One simple thing that would help is the employment of drivers over 70 years of age. This is an issue that many Members have raised, and I have raised and pursued it myself in the past as well. Bus Éireann refuses to employ drivers over 70. These drivers are fully licensed and, provided they are in good health and certified as such, they should be able to drive. The very same drivers can drive to a school, pick up students and take them to a football or soccer match, to swimming lessons or on school outings, yet they cannot actually drive children to school. The policy makes absolutely no sense. Age is no barrier to employment, whether it be a bus driver or a TD. I am 75 years of age. My colleague across on the Government benches, Deputy Pat The Cope Gallagher, is two years my senior. I hope nobody would suggest we are not able to do the job.

We have been promised a result out of this for quite some time now and I wonder when we are going to get a decision on it from the Minister of State's Department and Bus Éireann. The sooner the better. Of course, we need a much more ambitious scheme. We need a major expansion of the scheme, which would also give us an opportunity to help meet climate targets and take more motor vehicles off the road. To this end, we need the scheme to be universal. We need to reduce the eligible distances. We need to integrate the scheme with the public transport network. The school transport scheme needs to be free and it needs to be transferred from the Department of education to the Department of Transport. It would also, of course, facilitate the building up of a culture of public transport use by young people with a view to continuing that culture of transport use into adulthood.

Brian Stanley (Laois, Independent)
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It is a cyclical problem at this time of year. From about July onwards, TDs' offices are bombarded with problems regarding school transport. I am sure my situation is no different from the situations of the rest of the Members in this House.

There are a number of problems arising with the schemes. One of the main problems is that you cannot get talking to a human being in Bus Éireann. There is an automated system and that is fine. When that works, it generally works well. The problem is that, when there is an issue that arises, the computer cannot make a change and sometimes you need to talk to a person. While it may be an Oireachtas email, that does not do it; the same reply keeps bouncing back the whole time. Some of the problems that arise regard routes being changed, and people having to go two miles before they actually get to the pick-up point. We had this in the Jamestown-Ballybrittas area. There needs to be human contact.

Other problems that arise with the scheme are in relation to the catchment areas.

I understand there has to be a catchment area. However, the village of Borris-in-Ossory is split into two halves. It is a small village of 500 or 600 people. The main street is split in half. There is a gap of 50 yards where the children in one household go to St. Fergal's in Rathdowney while the children in a house 50 yards up the road go to Roscrea, despite the fact that they originally went to the same school. There is no logic to that. There needs to be a level of flexibility. I understand that there can only be so much flexibility - I am not arguing for absolute flexibility - but this needs to be addressed.

The other issue I want to raise is in the context of the programme for Government. I read the review and it shows there will be an expansion of about 100,000 pupils. I welcome that but there will not be the drivers. I have raised this over and over again. There are over-70s who are sitting at home today but who could be driving buses. It is generally not economically viable for under-65s to do it because it is a three-hour a day job. However, it suits somebody on a pension. We cannot have people driving buses who have a dickey heart or dodgy eyesight. I understand all of that; that is no problem. I have a HGV licence and I must have a medical test every so many years for that. It is right that I should do that in order to keep the HGV licence. We have a situation where over-70s cannot drive a child in a taxi as part of the scheme for Bus Éireann or have ten children in a minibus, yet many of them are driving coaches. I know them. Friends of mine are driving coaches with 50, 60 or 70 passengers on board during the day but they cannot drive the school bus. They are 71 or 72 years of age. The limit needs to be extended to 75. I would make that proposal to the Minister of State. I have raised this with the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the Minister for Transport and now I am raising it with the Minister of State. They all seem to agree that this needs to change. I spoke to the Minister of State, Seán Canney, about it outside the Dáil just before recess. I do not want to misrepresent him, but he indicated to me that there was a problem with Bus Éireann. Bus Éireann is putting the brakes on this. This needs to be resolved. This is a State contractor getting taxpayers' money. I know it needs safe drivers, but we do not have the drivers to cover the scheme. Bus operators are telling me - I am sure it is happening across the country - that they cannot get the drivers. We need to sort this out and have a strict medical test for over-70s. If they pass the test, they are fit to drive. We cannot continue to ignore this problem. I implore the Minister of State, as someone in the Department of education, and the officials here today to come back with an answer on this. This cannot be put off on the never-never. The Government can put it on paper that it will expand the scheme, but it will never be able to because it will not have the operators and drivers. I am saying this to be helpful.

Naoise Ó Cearúil (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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I commend the Minister of State on the amount of work he carried out over the summer, particularly in relation to school transport and special education. There was a marked improvement this year in comparison to previous years. It is important to acknowledge that. However, there continue to be serious issues with school transport. The programme for Government commits to ensuring better management of the application system and timely communication to parents and families. While that has been the case for the majority - we have to be honest about this - it has not been so for a lot of families. It is important we recognise that.

Some key issues have been identified by my office over the past month and a half. One is the refusal or withdrawal of bus places. Previously eligible students are being denied transport without a clear reason. One example concerns a family with a student with ASD in Maynooth Community College who, despite having additional needs, was refused a ticket after years of receiving one and with another child in primary school with ASD. The family cannot afford private transport.

A second issue is last-minute notification and payment issues. Families were notified days before term started in some cases that there were no seats available despite timely application and the fact they had paid early in July. One example of this concerns the Kilcock to Maynooth route where a student who used the service last year and paid in April was told in late August there was no seat. There is no viable public transport alternative for this particular student. Another example is Enfield to Maynooth. A student's confirmed ticket was cancelled the next day after being approved, leaving the family stranded, having cancelled private transport they had arranged previously.

A third issue is disruption and uncertainty on rural routes. Services are disrupted or cancelled with little notice. In regard to the Tirmoghan-Hortland-Knockanally route to Scoil Dara in Kilcock, for example, one parent was left without a service despite reassurances from Bus Éireann. A local driver with a bus offered to help but has been ignored by Bus Éireann.

Fourth, it has been encapsulated by many people that there is poor communication and lack of transparency from Bus Éireann. Families report repeated unanswered calls and emails, unclear timelines and no guidance on alternative arrangements or grants. One student in Scoil Uí Riada in Kilcock was unable to get replacement tickets despite multiple requests and follow-ups.

Fifth, there is inappropriate allocation and route management. Concession tickets are being issued on routes where school finishing times differ significantly, leaving children waiting in unsafe conditions. That could be a child in senior infants and a child in sixth class, for example, and the collection times do not match up. In Gaelcholáiste Mhaigh Nuad, for example, students were left waiting for 40 minutes after school due to sharing a bus with other schools, namely, Maynooth post-primary and Maynooth Community College. These students are left waiting around.

The impact on families and on students is severe, particularly on children with additional needs. The Minister of State has a particular focus on children with additional and special educational needs. These are the students who need particular focus. Also, it is discriminatory against rural families with a lack of alternatives.

I would like to bring some recommendations to the table. One is to review Bus Éireann allocations to prioritise continuity for returning students. It should not be the case that a person gets a school ticket one year but not the following year, especially those with additional needs. Second, improve communication. We have heard repeatedly how difficult communication is with Bus Éireann, not just for ourselves as Members of the Oireachtas, but particularly for members of the public. If there are queries or issues, communication needs to be set up in a way that is easily accessible for families. The third recommendation is to utilise available local resources and engage local drivers and buses willing to provide a service, particularly on disrupted routes. We have heard from Members about the over-70s. I recommend that there be an annual doctor’s certificate or type of medical assessment that would allow drivers aged over 70 years to help with those demands. We also need to expand the capacity on oversubscribed routes, especially to the large secondary schools where we have repeatedly seen students being denied tickets. We also need to streamline the grant process, clarify the eligibility criteria, ensure timely payments, review route allocations, ensure concession tickets are fairly issued and route timings match school schedules. The difficulty with schedules is trying to cater for children with different finishing times in the one family.

I implore the Minister of State to put as much pressure on Bus Éireann as possible. Communication is the key element to ensure families and, in particular, students are looked after properly.

Joe Neville (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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It was not solely my office that was inundated. I am sure the Minister of State's own office and, indeed, all constituency offices across the country were inundated with similar issues.

Having listened to other Deputies on this topic, I am left wondering how it is such a big problem every year. It seems to catch us almost by surprise. Here we are, school buses are needed and people need places. Unfortunately, it repeats itself all the time. We get the same calls. We know we should have bus drivers over 70. Everybody seems to say that, yet nobody seems able to put it in place and we are here facing the same questions.

Some of the biggest issues we have are, as people near the start of the school year, they have their uniforms bought, their schoolbooks ready and their bus tickets ready to go. Unfortunately, they are then told - many were told only a week or two before school returned - that there will be no buses available. This causes huge difficulty for families. It has huge implications. People were ready to travel to work sure that their kids would be brought to school by a bus. In my constituency, they might have been commuting to Dublin and elsewhere and believed they would be able to drop their kids off at a spot at, for example, Johnstown Bridge at 7.30 a.m. or Clane at 7.15 a.m. However, they were then told at the last minute that they wold not be able to do so and that different plans wold have to be made. This is not good enough.

Multiple families have reached out to me to say they were told in early August that their children had received tickets servicing areas between Maynooth and Kilcock, areas outside Naas, only to be told the week after the children returned to school that the bus service would not be running. When questioned on this, Bus Éireann told one constituent that it had trouble setting up transport on some routes, including that of the constituent. It stated that a number of difficulties had arisen in some localities with a small number of contracted services, including the service intended for the children of my constituent. It stated that in some cases, those difficulties had arisen due to a lack of driver or contractor availability. That is not good enough, considering that people had sought those routes multiple months earlier. Another constituent received a response outlining that if a family was advised, through direct contact or displayed on their online account, that there was no capacity to issue tickets for their children, they could be assured that Bus Éireann had exhausted all avenues to accommodate pupils. It went on to state that it was not open to Bus Éireann to create additional capacity or engage additional vehicles.

I have a major question arising from the responses received. Bus Éireann knew in early June the exact number of pupils who would need school bus tickets for the following year. If it is not up to Bus Éireann, who can create additional capacity or engage additional vehicles? Is it up to the parents themselves? Is it up to us, because we are the ones who are asked questions? It is not. It is up to Bus Éireann. For next year, I ask that Bus Éireann engage continually with those contractors over the summer. New schools are not built in that timeframe. Kids are not going to school in hugely different numbers in different areas. Surely there can be a mechanism whereby when the leaving certificate examinations and primary school years have finished towards the end of June, we can be ready to start again at the end of August. Perhaps through more communication, we could bring things to a better space.

I know the Minister of State has been listening. I am sure he has been hearing these sorts of comments in his office. I thank him for the time to allow my voice and the voices of the constituents who put the matter to me in recent weeks to be heard.

Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North-Central, Fianna Fail)
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I do not now how many phone calls I had with the Minister of State during the summer and in previous years about school transport, particularly in rural areas. To be fair, whether due to his good work or by coincidence, many of the problematic routes I referenced in recent years resolved themselves this year. Pending the implementation of the review commissioned by the then Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, my concern is that I will be revisited by the ghosts of yesteryear next summer. The one time of year that I, as a public representative, dread is coming into the school transport season. I have that fear because we have a geographical enigma on the northside of Cork city. Many rural villages are quite close to the environs of the city but have no history or tradition of attending those schools. They normally attend secondary schools in Carrignavar, Fermoy or Midleton in east Cork. Those are the large towns that have the rural hinterland and attract those students. My concern is that along that geographical enigma, which includes villages such as Whitechurch, Carrignavar, Glenville, Bottlehill and Watergrasshill, people often have no choice but to go to their second, third or fourth closest school. That is primarily because of tradition, history and that rural connection. In that vein, I ask for the review that was conducted to be implemented as quickly as possible. We need a demand-led model as soon as possible. In villages such as Watergrasshill, there might be 50 or 60 students awaiting a school bus seat because those villages are growing quickly. Those students must be prioritised in any system we have because of the numbers involved. That is not to say that we will forget people in rural areas because of course we should not. Where it makes business or commercial sense to operate bus routes, we need to put on additional routes to service the demand.

It would be remiss of me, particularly considering the Minister of State's remit, not to raise the issue of school transport for students with special needs. It is probably the one area that was problematic this summer. I know the Minister of State is working away on the issue and I have talked to his staff. I know the difficulties around drivers, securing routes and so on. The issue is particularly acute in Cork at the moment. Many students who are attending either special schools or ASD classes in mainstream schools are struggling. We need to put impetus behind that now to try to secure taxis and buses for as many of those children as we can.

Every second TD has raised the issue of drivers and extending the age limit for drivers. I taught in a school for 15 years and, thankfully, our caretaker drove the bus to matches, events or things in UCC or wherever else. We always had a driver at hand. That man, when he retired, went over the permitted age to drive a bus. He is now driving part time in his mid-70s. He would not be allowed to drive a Bus Éireann school bus. That needs to be reviewed. We have been talking about the issue in this House for long enough. We have talked about engaging with the RSA. One way or another, the issue needs to be put to bed. If there is some medical reason or another reason people who are elderly cannot drive a bus, I would like to know what it is once and for all. It gets peddled around here every couple of years when we are having these debates.

My final point is probably my most contentious. I do not mean it to be. I mean it in the right way. When the cost of a ticket was initially reduced to €50, it was done during the cost-of-living crisis. I understood why it was done. It was done with helping families who were hard-pressed in mind. The knock-on consequence is that it has created higher demand for seats and we have not been able to meet the demand. In an ideal world, I would love to see free school transport or to see it cost €50. That is fine, once we can accommodate the demand. If we do not have the resources to accommodate all those people, we need to put a value on those tickets. I have anecdotal information about situations where people avail of the ticket because it is so cheap and then do not use it. In some of those cases, people are occupying seats but not using them. That needs to be looked at. There should be a use it or lose it policy and somebody's seat should be forfeited if it is not used within a certain period. I am not trying to take away willy-nilly things that have been given to people. I am on about maximising the capacity we have in the system and using it in the best way. That needs to be looked at, at least in the short term.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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My colleague, Deputy O'Rourke, put it well when he said we had this every year. The debate about school transport is a matter of rinse and repeat. I think the Deputy used the term "a new low". That was the idea. We have all spoken about families who had bus routes confirmed and tickets issued only to get a refusal at the last minute. In my constituency, there were issues in Blackrock and Haggardstown, heading to Dundalk, and the Tullyallen to Drogheda route. I dealt with a number of our councillors, including Councillor Eric Donovan, in that regard, as has my colleague, Deputy Joanna Byrne. Some of the issues took a number of weeks to rectify. That is not taking away from the considerable amount of work that has been done. As was said earlier, we need to consider the need that is out there. We must plan properly to ensure we have the resources. I do not know for how long we are going to be talking about drivers who are over the age of 70 and who can drive in other circumstances. They can drive the same kids whether to a school tour or wherever else in any other circumstances. We have been talking about this for years and the situation has not moved on. I ask that somebody grip the issue and get it to the place it needs to be. That may alleviate some of the issue. We must ensure we have the resources to deliver.

I am told there will be a computerisation, for want of a better term, that will allow us to know how many are using the system and whatever else. That is all fine. However, we do not need to be dealing with parents who send emails stating that they paid for and received two tickets for a route that does not have a bus. Some parents received an email yesterday from Bus Éireann to state that no service was available. One correspondent of mine is a lady with a husband, both of whom work. They have a number of other children who attend a local primary school so they cannot take their two girls to a secondary school in Dundalk. We cannot have circumstances such as those. It is not good enough.

We know we need to address the issue of the thresholds relating to distances. That would deal with a significant amount.

I will finish on an issue I have previously brought up with the Minister of State. We know there is an issue in respect of transport for children with special educational needs, but I will speak about kids who are using the system as it exists.

I spoke about a Down's syndrome child who used the services for two years on a concessionary basis. I am saying he should not be concessionary; he should just get the service as a right. He and his brothers travelled and they are the only people who did not get it. I know the Minister of State is working on this. I will leave it at that.

Thomas Gould (Cork North-Central, Sinn Fein)
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Last week, I stood here and outlined cases of children who cannot get buses. Children with additional needs cannot get transport to special schools. There were places made available but, once again, these children are being let down. Just to let the Minister of State know, in the past week only one family has got school transport. Do you know how it got it? It went to a solicitor. Are we now in a situation in this country where children with additional needs and children with disabilities must go to solicitors to get what is their constitutional right? Is that the kind of country we are running at the moment?

As I was coming into the Chamber, I was on the phone and heard that not one of those children under discussion has had transport. I spoke to a lady whose son Cillian is on a bus with six other children, none of whom has got school transport down to Carrigaline. Other families have children going up to St. Paul's, St. Bernadette's and Scoil Éanna in Montenotte but they have no transport. Those in Carrignavar go to Fermoy because the Carrignavar school is not built yet. They have no school transport.

A guy from Youghal who supplies buses contacted me today. He has four specialised buses that can take six children or three children in wheelchairs. He is ready to go. He has the buses and drivers but cannot get an answer from Bus Éireann. What kind of a show is the Government running? What kind of a show is it when there is a man with four specialised buses and children screaming and crying for school transport but no one to give an answer?

I am a TD for Cork North-Central and cannot receive correspondence – emails or phone calls – from Bus Éireann on any of my questions. I am a TD representing my community, including children with additional needs, but I cannot get an answer. It is not good enough. It is not good enough that the Department is refusing. It will not answer to parents, schools or TDs. Who is responsible? Who is going to fix it? Is the Minister of State going to fix it? I am asking the question and will be back here again next week to ask it. Will the Minister of State give a commitment here today that all those children will have school transport put in place? Will he give a commitment that Bus Éireann will contact all of them with a timeline? The way they are being treated is not good enough.

Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent)
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To follow up on my colleague's comments, there is an issue about accountability and responsibility. It is not the NTA that deals with the school buses; it is Bus Éireann that has been given that job. If Bus Éireann is not doing the job, representatives here would like to know why, who is accountable and who is going to be fired from their job for being incompetent. If it is an issue of supply, the competence issue goes back to the Government. As others have said, we should be able to make decisions on 80% to 90% of bus provision in July, or even in May because the offers of places will often have gone out by that stage. In built-up urban areas like my constituency, there are parents who must wait until the second week of September before their children are offered a place. Dublin, north Kildare, Wicklow, Cork and Galway are the crunch points for the special educational needs students. On areas around the rest of the country, my colleagues will be more articulate and knowledgeable about what needs to be done. I definitely think there needs to be accountability and better planning.

While we have a resources issue, there is also that of the drivers over 70. I am going to drone on about this because this has been raised over multiple years and raised today by multiple elected representatives. A taxi driver can drive up to the age of 75 but is not allowed, under contract, to drop kids to a school. As others have mentioned, someone with a private coach-hire service can bring a bunch of kids somewhere but not under the contracted service. That does not make sense at all. We have heard before that this may be reviewed by the Government under the programme for Government, but the question is one of how long it takes to review whether someone medically fit and competent to drive and carry people of all ages should be able to do so. It should just direct Bus Éireann to make it so.

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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As sure as every summer holiday finishes and as sure as the kids go back to school, there is a school bus crisis. It is incredible that there is a crisis every single year. Every TD in this House has been chasing their tail and chasing around the country to find solutions in individual cases.

Let me outline the issue that really frustrates me. The Government's stated objective is to get people into public transport and it is using a stick to do so. In this regard, there was €4.1 billion charged in fuel taxes last year and €1 billion in carbon tax. It is not that people do not want to use public transport. People are dying to or crying out to use it. Every single parent in the country who lives outside the core of a town wants to get it, but while the Government is using the stick to get them into public transport it is actually denying them the public transport they are crying out for. There is a major contradiction in the Government's plans in relation to this. Right now, pools of families in certain areas all want to get to particular schools. They have the critical mass for buses but the Government is actually refusing them those buses.

This year, for the first time I have seen, we had a case in which the service for children whose parents had the tickets and the right was cancelled a week before school starting. I know of at least ten services in Meath that were cancelled just in the week in advance of school opening. Parents were scrambling around trying to find solutions to get their kids to school, with many parents having to take time off work just to be able to do that, and obviously getting into big difficulties with their employers. Thankfully, a lot of these cases have been solved. I thank the Bus Éireann staff in Meath who have been able to resolve them.

This chaos is not by accident. One of the reasons it is happening is the lack of capacity. One of the reasons we have a lack of capacity is that drivers and mechanics are not being offered the proper pay, terms and conditions necessary to get them into the sector. If you want to employ people, you have to compete in the marketplace for them and ensure you can provide them with the proper pay, terms and conditions.

The second issue in relation to this, which really frustrates me, is that although there are many private bus providers with the capacity, buses and drivers, they cannot get their buses into the system. This is because the tendering by Bus Éireann can often be very difficult. It can often require a scale that makes it difficult for smaller providers to get their buses into the system. Moreover, the fact that we have increased energy costs makes it more difficult for smaller providers to tender. This is because their margins are squeezed by those higher energy costs.

I wanted to talk about common sense on the matter of drivers over 70. I heard the Minister being asked why the rule has not been changed. The Minister said it was not the Department's fault but that of Bus Éireann, and that it is its regulation that requires a ban on over-70s driving school buses. Who is in charge here? The Minister is ultimately responsible. The Minister needs to sit down with Bus Éireann and direct it to change its direction in relation to this.

There is an issue over schools. Many areas have traditional and historic links to particular schools. School choice should be real for families. Right now, we have different ethoses among schools, yet parents are being forced to go in certain directions they do not want to go. Parents from the area of Rathmolyon–Baconstown have a natural relationship with Trim, yet their children are being pushed elsewhere. This is especially the case with children with additional needs. There is a family in Bohermeen with a child with additional needs who is being forced into a school that does not have the necessary support for them. The parents are missing out on the supports that would help that child to get the education they need.

Michael Collins (Cork South-West, Independent Ireland Party)
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I pleaded at a meeting of the Business Committee recently, maybe two weeks ago, for this debate to take place. I thank the Chief Whip for accommodating it and the Minister of State for attending today.

Deputy Gogarty asked who is going to be fired. There has to be significant movement from the Minister of State's end on resolving the crisis. I plead with him in this regard. He is not long in his position, so he can take only take a very small fraction of the blame here – let us be honest – but unfortunately I have been nine years asking the same questions. Others who are here longer are not getting answers. It is time for clear answers to come into play here.

Everybody is pointing the finger when it comes to the over-70s. I will touch on that in a minute. Once again, we are back here discussing the ongoing circus that is the school bus system. Year after year, we are promised change, especially regarding the closest-school rule, yet here we are facing the same issues.

In Ballinadee, 20 to 30 children who are eligible - not concessionary - have been left without school transport. These families were told at the start of the school year that a bus would be provided. Days before school began, they were informed that there would be no bus and they would have to make their own arrangements. Last week, Bus Éireann did a U-turn on this. Last Thursday or Friday, it communicated to parents that the service would resume. They received that confirmation, but yesterday morning no bus arrived. It is an absolute farce. You could not believe it. I have seen it. I was sent the messages from Bus Éireann.

Of course, when we contact Bus Éireann, as Deputy Gould and others said, it is hidden behind a shield because the Government is sparing its blushes. The Government is backing it, as is the Minister of State, if he will not stand up here tonight to say they will make it answerable. Once the Minister of State does that, things will move. If he fails to do that, he is failing in his duty, as his predecessors have failed. This is a scandalous situation. A proper message was not even sent out to these parents until yesterday afternoon. Imagine having your children at the side of the road waiting for a bus they were promised that never turned up. I was promised it as a public representative. I cannot deal with anybody any more. The Minister of State is only acknowledging a bare message. Bus Éireann could not bother its arse acknowledging any message. It is above us as public representatives, and above parents and everybody. Everybody is above everyone here but no one is taking accountability for what is going on.

The bottom line is this is a scandalous situation that the Government is standing over year after year. Throughout this debacle, I have made repeated representations to Bus Éireann, to the Oireachtas team, to the Cork contact and to the Minister of State's office. All I have received in return are acknowledgements. It is an absolute disgrace that in 2025 we have to come to the Dáil to demand basic school transport for eligible children. Will the Minister of State rectify this situation immediately and ensure these families get the service they were promised?

This is not an isolated case. We also have a case at Kilcoe, Skibbereen, where 12 students in my constituency were told days before school started that they would not receive tickets, despite a 45-seater bus running with only 20 seats filled. Again, I have made numerous representations and received only acknowledgements. I am told there is a guarantee these students will not be left behind as happened in Ballinadee.

While we at it, the situation with drivers aged over 70 is ludicrous. These drivers can pick up students and take them to swimming classes or school tours, etc., but Bus Éireann will not allow them take students to school. I am not blaming Bus Éireann. In the audiovisual room today, I asked whether the Minister has any responsibility. The drivers told me that yes, she does. The Government is pointing the finger at Bus Éireann, Bus Éireann is pointing the finger back at the Government and, nine years later, we have no answers. It has gone beyond a farcical joke. We need answers from the Minister of State. I look forward to answers from him to see whether there is a way forward. Will he stand up for healthy bus drivers over 70 who have a medical certificate and say, "Yes, you can drive with a medical certificate"?

Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent Ireland Party)
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Last Saturday, we were at the Holy Family school in Charleville for a fundraiser where up to 100 motorbikes came out. They do so year after year to raise funds for additional resources for the school. There is a shortfall year on year and resources are raised. Money from last year went in for part of a playground for the children in that school. Looking around the country, vintage clubs and different people from various sectors come out to raise funds. We were at the Rathkeale men's shed on Sunday. There is not a weekend when I am not at two or three different events trying to raise funds for special needs schools, and local schools, for services we should be able to provide through the Government, yet these are not being provided.

We have asked the Government to do a couple of simple things from the point of view of bus transport, one of which is to move the age so we can have bus drivers over 70 years of age. Yet, it has not been done. Surely today it should be based on health. You could have a healthy 70-year-old and a 55-year-old who is not healthy. It should surely be based on a medical examination of whether someone is capable of doing a job. Even the Taoiseach has said that eligibility to do a job should be based on health and capability, so why is it taking so long for us to get a response so we can have people brought to schools and different sectors? Time after time, we have to wait for this Department and that Department and we have to look at regulation after regulation, but during Covid we could click our fingers and it was done. We could solve anything during Covid that could never be done, but now we are back into the old ways of doing things and it taking six months, 12 months or two years. We need to move on this.

Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)
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There has been a lot of criticism today of the school transport scheme but it has to be acknowledged that in recent times the scale of the scheme has ramped up significantly. Over 180,000 children are transported through the school transport scheme every day. It is a huge number. The programme for Government sets out far more ambition in terms of an additional 100,000. That is very welcome. We all know the obvious benefits, including the social and environmental benefits and so on, of having an effective school transport system in place. It is something we have to aspire to continually improve. Obviously, there are difficulties, including one particular case on which I have engaged with the Minister of State and his staff. I appreciate all the efforts that are being made to try to resolve that case. More generally, the review that was carried out last year brought forward significant recommendations. It is important, as I said, that we continue to scale up the school transport scheme as a whole.

One specific issue that has come to my attention, and it is an easy fix, relates to the distance requirement, which is 3.2 km for a primary school and 4.8 km for a post-primary school. I raise the case of siblings from a family who are travelling from the same area to the same village or town. Let us say I have two children in primary school but the next year one of them goes into post-primary school and no longer qualifies for the scheme. That presents significant logistical issues. That is something we have to be prepared to look at. There are obvious practical difficulties when one member of a family qualifies and another does not. It is effectively useless having one family member qualify when the other does not.

The Government is trying to encourage as many people as possible back into employment and the workforce, regardless of whether they are men and women. Many households are now two-income households. Childcare is obviously a huge barrier to people getting back into the workforce. The simple practical issue of getting children to school is also a significant barrier. If we had an effective school transport scheme, it would be a significant help for parents as they could ensure their children get to school safely through that scheme. Again, that is another benefit and another reason we have to deliver on it.

I heard many speakers raise the over-70s issue. I will add my voice to that. Any approach in respect of age should be evidentially based. It should be based on medical assessment. There should not be a blanket ban on someone because he or she reaches a certain age. We all know people's health differs significantly no matter what age they are. Some people have good health; other people have health issues. We should base it on an evidential approach in a medical assessment. I ask the Minister of State to redouble his efforts there because driver availability is a significant issue in scaling up the school transport scheme.

Specifically in my constituency, one particular route causing difficulty is that from Minane Bridge to Crosshaven. A large number of families are still in contact with me in relation to not having a place on the bus. That particular route serves areas such as Fountainstown and Hoddersfield en route to Crosshaven. The Minister of State's staff have been working on it for me. As I said, I appreciate that, but it is causing significant difficulty. We are a number of weeks into the new school term. These families have still not got traction with Bus Éireann. I have to say, and Bus Éireann was mentioned, that unfortunately I cannot give it a gold star for its communication to us as public representatives. It needs to engage better with us. We are only highlighting the issues and glitches that are there. It would be served better if its staff engaged and communicated in a better way with us as public representatives.

Overall, I appreciate the efforts that are made. We have to put this in perspective in terms of the scale of the school transport scheme. Of course, there will always be difficulties in each of our constituencies that we have to try to work through, which is something the Minister of State is doing. It is about the benefits and importance of the scheme, but also the real difficulties it is causing families. I ask that in the coming week or so we make every effort possible to iron out the remaining difficulties. I thank the Minister of State for facilitating the debate. Many speakers have spoken on it. It is an important issue for us as public representatives.

Peter Roche (Galway East, Fine Gael)
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I, too, have been listening to this debate for a number of hours. I will acknowledge that the Minister, Deputy McEntee, and the Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, have only been in office since last January. From engaging with both of them on these issues, I know of the gallant efforts being made to resolve them.

As I said, I listened to the debate. Like most others, the problems are repeated in every constituency.

My real concern is people being denied tickets sometimes without a clear explanation. Some children are forced to walk over 4 km per day to reach a pick-up point even where a safer closer collection point is available. In some cases, students with disabilities are not allocated buses with proper accessibility, which is a real concern, leaving families in impossible situations. We have heard from families in our constituencies who have a Bus Éireann stop near them but because it falls outside the catchment, they are forced to drive to a different point in another town. This is not their system. It is just the system that is designed and this system is failing them. In light of the fact these issues affect children and young families, a prompt and co-ordinated response is required - I know this is something the Minister promised - from the Government and the tender services.

As legislators, we need to ensure school transport is fair, safe and sustainable. The current system needs overhaul. I and others acknowledge that there has been a change in demographics, which adds its own pressures because it is very difficult to predict what is coming down the tracks year on year with certainty. We need to look at continued reform and investment and accountability. This must include revisiting the age guidelines. I would add my voice to that. Older drivers can drive around Europe yet they are forbidden to drive for Bus Éireann. We need to look at the routes in every constituency. I am parochial. I represent Galway East. In situations where schools are over capacity, students who would normally choose that school are being pushed to go to other locations that are not within that catchment and therein lies another anomaly. A child may have to move to a new location thus pressurising him or her into finding a new bus route. A young lady from my parish applied for a bus ticket for a different school and was refused notwithstanding the fact that they had a ticket already. If we are down to refusing one child on a route like, it really calls this into question, so I am looking for more flexibility and more availability.

Martin Daly (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail)
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I acknowledge the Minister of State's exceptional commitment to his brief since he was appointed and his approachability at all times to help us solve problems in our constituencies. School transport is not a luxury. It is a necessity for thousands of families, including many in my constituency. Every school day, 180,000 children rely on the service, which is one of the largest logistical operations managed by the State. However, the system as it stands is too rigid and inflexible. When a child's nearest school is full, parents are often left with no choice but to enrol their child in another school in a different locality and yet they are not guaranteed a seat on the bus because of the nearest school rule. This leaves families in an impossible position. They have secured a school place for their child but they cannot get them there. This problem is especially evident in Ballinasloe. The presence of Portiuncula Hospital means there is a constant turnover of medical staff - registrars, consultants and essential workers who move to the town with their families. These families are essential to the running of the hospital and the provision of healthcare in the region and yet too often they find that no school transport is available for their children at primary or post-primary levels. This creates serious logistical pressures for parents who are working long hours, on-call rosters and shift work in a busy regional hospital.

The review of the school transport scheme highlighted many of these issues and made welcome recommendations. These include reducing the distance criteria and removing the strict requirement to attend the nearest school in situations where existing bus routes already serve the area or where there is sufficient parental demand. These are sensible and pragmatic proposals but they must be implemented carefully and effectively. Capacity remains the central challenge. We need enough buses, enough drivers and proper planning to ensure every eligible child who applies on time is guaranteed a seat. Part of the solution must involve making bus driving a much more attractive career with secure hours, fair pay and a pipeline of trained drivers so we can meet growing demand. Parents are willing to pay the modest fees of €50 for a primary pupil and €75 for a post-primary pupil with a family cap of €125 but what they really need is certainty that transport will be available. I believe there is a real opportunity to get this right. If we follow through on the recommendations of the review and invest in the necessary capacity, we can deliver a scheme that is fair, reliable and sustainable and that meets the needs of families into the future.

James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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This is my first contribution since the Dáil returned. I look forward to the next number of months. I thank the Minister of State for his ongoing engagement regarding school transport. I will address the pilot scheme for the Kilcredan school area. When this was brought forward, a lot of us were thrilled because we felt it would bring about a permanent solution. It has been very difficult dealing with school bus issues in this area because, unfortunately, the traditional parish dynamic of rural communities, which is extremely important to people in rural Ireland, is being affected by distance-based judgements about who is and is not eligible for school transport. About six families are still affected despite the pilot scheme. Given that this is a pilot scheme with the ambition of tackling this issue, could this finally be put to rest? We need a slight solution with regard to a larger-scale bus. I have been in contact with the Minister of State, who works exceptionally hard. Nobody would doubt that but we would like to see a solution for the parents and children in the Kilcredan catchment covering Ballymacoda, Ladysbridge and Garryvoe. It has been a long-standing problem over a long number of years. I add my voice to those of so many other Deputies here and ask that the over-70s limit on bus drivers for school transport be dealt with. I understand it is with the board of Bus Éireann but it is desperately needed if people are medically fit to operate school bus services

Emer Currie (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I know the Minister of State wants to hear about issues our constituents are facing so he can fix them and I appreciate that. I also appreciate that there has been an increase in the number of students accessing the service and most families have a positive experience but too many do not and for those households, it is causing havoc. A total of 11 students are travelling 10 km from Tyrrelstown, Hollywoodrath to Ériu Community College in Hantsfield. The local secondary school is full. In two years' time, Ériu Community College under the direction of the Department will move to Hollywoodrath but there is no bus to accommodate those students for whom this will become their local school and there is no commitment to accommodate the parents in Hantsfield who in good faith sent their children to a local school that is now being moved from one catchment area to an entirely different one. It seems to have fallen into bureaucratic purgatory. Can we please sort it out?

The system works on the basis of the first available school but ethos and whether it is co-educational must also be taken into consideration in modern Ireland. We cannot say on one hand that we recognise the importance of diversity when it comes to school ethos and then limit that choice because of bureaucratic sticking points.

Children attending Catherine McAuley National School are already travelling outside their area to attend the school because we do not have reading classes in Dublin West. They have missed four weeks of school because the service was pulled at the last minute. Parents have been told that their bus will collect their children at 6.45 a.m. As a parent, I am saying that this is not on. That is not a solution for these families. The Minister of State's office is extremely helpful for which I thank it but I ask his intervention in finding workable solutions. This system is built to provide 175,000 tickets, which is to be commended, but it is a black-and-white system that needs to recalibrate to work for families and modern Ireland.

At the centre of that, to provide that service we need to rectify the driver's licences for the over-70s so we can increase the number of buses available.

Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. We have a new school year and a new Minister in place, but we have had the same old school transport chaos. In my constituency office, it is just part of what we do in the latter part of every August and in September. We deal with families who are absolutely distraught because their entire back to school plans have been thrown up in the air because of a last-minute email from Bus Éireann telling them the school bus place that was paid for and booked back in April in most instances is not actually in place. It is not good enough and the Minister of State’s Department needs to be much firmer with Bus Éireann on the service and planning that goes into providing this transport. Whoever secures such an important contract as our school bus routes has a responsibility to ensure the requisite number of buses, the right sizes of buses and the right number of drivers are in place long before the school year commences.

There is a number of distinct issues in terms of the dysfunction that affects these services. It is a minority of them but when it affects your family it is all that is important. The first is obviously the students who are eligible for school transport, have applied on time and paid on time only to find the bus is not in place. There should be a zero tolerance approach to situations like that. I would be saying to Bus Éireann and operators if they secure the contract that they just have to do that and we should be really robust. Then there is the issue of so-called concessionary tickets. Let us call a spade a spade; concessionary ticket holders are students who need a school bus place and whether they get it is a matter, essentially, of somebody’s generosity. This is despite the fact the school transport review, which was delayed for virtually two years, set very clear recommendations on reducing the distance for which students would be eligible. Some little bit of flexibility on the nearest school principle would ensure people are able to secure transport for their children. It should be an absolute principle and a goal of this House that every child who needs a school bus should get a seat on that bus.

The irony is not lost on people in rural constituencies like my own that we spend so much time lecturing – I will use that term – people about using their car that we have families in counties like Monaghan who are forced to put their children into their car every morning and drive behind the school bus to the exact same place because they have been denied a place on that bus. The other issue that needs to be addressed is the length of time and the bureaucracy when it comes to school bus routes that need to be changed due primarily to demographic changes like new children in areas or for road safety reasons. I am dealing with a number of cases in parishes neighbouring my own where children from one road, which is a very rural, local road, all have to track down to a much busier regional road in the dark hours of the morning. We are engaging with Bus Éireann to try to get that rerouted or at least to get some mechanism to accommodate those children. The fear I have is we might ultimately be successful but it might be next year. As elected representatives, there is always a fear when somebody brings road safety concerns to our attention. We should have a mechanism through which those concerns can be addressed as quickly as possible. The difficulties are compounded by the fact it is often very difficult for us as elected representatives, never mind the families concerned, to get responses from Bus Éireann. It is quite clear there are not enough support staff in the company to respond to queries from the public and elected representatives. I am sure it is a very stressful job for those individuals who have to deal with it.

In my last five seconds I make an appeal that has been made several times today, which is that we deal with the issue of drivers over the age of 70 who are medically fit to drive buses. They want to drive school buses and they should be permitted to do so.

Michael Lowry (Tipperary North, Independent)
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Many parents across the country are struggling with the current school transport system. This is particularly acute in rural communities. I have been inundated with irate and anxious parents, especially from the north Kilkenny area of my constituency. A multitude of problems arose within Johnstown, Galmoy, Freshford and Tullaroan. The issues arise where families are on the border or close to the boundaries of school catchment areas. Some of these children wish to attend schools in Kilkenny and Thurles, but are disqualified because of catchment area regulations. Failures, inconsistencies and anomalies cause parents and students distress, aggravation, inconvenience and in many cases a financial burden. A child may get a place in one school, but the bus serving that area may not align with the catchment, leaving parents with no viable alternative option. We regularly have parents denied the opportunity to select their preferred school. St. Joseph’s College, Borrisoleigh is a typical example of a progressive school that is losing students seeking to enrol. The school is at a disadvantage because of the existing configuration of school transport. The current system is outdated, unmanageable and unfit for purpose. Families are often caught between two schools and two different bus routes, yet neither may work for them under the current regulations. This creates a huge dilemma for parents who want their children to attend a preferred school, but find the transport rules and catchments do not allow them freedom of choice.

The situation is made worse by the reliance on the concessionary ticket system. Parents often do not find out until very close to the start of the school year whether their child has secured a seat. When they are not successful it leaves them scrambling at the last minute with no transport options. This is simply unsustainable and must change.

I also ask that the Minister of State play a role in ensuring that over-70s are allowed to continue to drive on school bus routes. It is an absolute nonsense to disqualify people from driving a school bus because they have reached the age of 70. The current work permit system is too rigid and does not allow for international recruitment.

When will we see the commitment in the programme for Government to commence a review of the school transport system? This review should look at integrating with Local Link services, which already operate in many areas, to create more flexible solutions for families. The review should also consider moving the allocation of bus tickets to an earlier point in the year so Bus Éireann and parents have more certainty and more time to plan ahead. The school transport issue is a recurring one that must be dealt with in an expeditious and fair manner. I hope the review will be conducted in a timely manner and make recommendations to make this system fair, equal and accessible.

Gillian Toole (Meath East, Independent)
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Education is a freedom and enabling children and teenagers to participate and achieve their own personal goals is of paramount importance. School transport is a significant part of that enablement. The Government has made great strides in the area of special education and the improvements include working with the NCSE to bring forward timelines, so I am wondering why in this area we still have the annual anxiety, chaos and disappointment for children and parents. Apply in April, pay in June and maybe have a ticket in August. I suppose this is not something that came upon us suddenly. In 2015 we had the Paris accord and in 2018 we had the UNCRPD, so there was plenty of flagging there. Using data to plan ahead does not seem to be happening, but given the mark the Minister of State is making by working with the NCSE and getting organised earlier, can school transport planning begin earlier as well, based perhaps on existing school enrolment numbers, the new NCSE forward planning with early booking and inviting parents to apply earlier for school transport? This could be in January or February each year rather than in April.

An example of multifunctionality that I give would be a Local Link service in Meath that could do the commuter run early in the morning to the train station, the school routes at 8 a.m. and then, perhaps, at 10 a.m. or 11 a.m. bring older people to their services, with the reverse being done in the evening beginning, maybe at 2 p.m. or 3 p.m. up to 6 p.m. or 7 p.m.

I will give a final example of where an anomaly exists in Carlanstown, County Meath, in the context of bringing young children to the ASD unit at O'Carolan College in Nobber. As it stands, for those who were lucky enough to receive tickets, their parents still have to drive them 4 km to the bus. The response from the parents is that if they are on the road anyway, they might as well keep on going to the school. I have every faith that the situation will improve.

Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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I am glad to get opportunity to talk about this matter. I will start with drivers who are over 70. I have been looking for this for many years. I am a contractor, and my father was at it from 1956. We have a long record of service of taking children to school in Kilgarvan and Kenmare. I understand the plight of drivers when they reach 70. I had the finest drivers who had to park up and forget about it when they turned 70. I have asked for them to be tested medically, independently or whatever, to ensure that they are perfect in every way, because the safety of children is a priority. I am not trying to put them in any danger by asking for it. I know the drivers I let go are driving other vehicles for other people, doing other things rather than transporting schoolchildren, and they are still driving perfectly. Drivers in the USA and the UK operate beyond 70 years of age. I have seen it and inquired into it. The Minister of State needs to look at that.

The other thing relates to 20-year-old buses. The minute buses reach 20 years of age here, even though they are mechanically sound and pass the test, they are put off the road and are no longer suitable for Bus Éireann. More often than not, those buses are being bought, taken to the North of Ireland and used to provide the same service up there. That is absolutely scandalous.

There is another real problem that contractors face. If a driver gets sick tomorrow morning, I could get a loan of a driver no problem from Teddy McCarthy below in Sneem or from O'Callaghan Coaches in Killarney. However, I cannot do that because they have been vetted by those people, but they need to be Garda vetted by me as well in the space of maybe 12 hours, which is ridiculous. If they are Garda vetted and on Bus Éireann's list, surely that should do. What is the difference of driving in Kilgarvan, Sneem or Killarney? They have to be Garda vetted separately if they come to me.

We have problems in Cronin's Wood in Killarney where 250 houses are being built. They are having difficulty getting down into the Monastery, the Presentation Convent and those places. They are looking for transport and they are entitled it.

We were trying to get a bus service in the Headford area to take people to the school in Barraduff. That matter is with the Minister of State. I hope he can do something about it. They found a tenth child late in the day, and we have been told that we have to wait until next year. That is not fair on the parents and children involved. I ask the Minister of State to do what he can about this matter.

Michael Moynihan (Cork North-West, Fianna Fail)
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I thank all those who contributed to the debate. Somebody said to me anecdotally that the school bus service was quiet this year and that there were not so many issues with it. After the past three and a half hours, I can see the issues quite clearly. The genuine commitment shown by Members on all sides in respect of school transport issues this afternoon is heartening. Everybody, whether in the opposition or in government, including non-party Members, has a huge commitment to school buses. That reflects on the value that parents and children throughout the country place on school buses. I know that very personally myself. It is heartening that this House has spent over three and a half hours debating it today and Deputies have brought issues from the length and breadth of the country. In the months since coming into this role, not only have I got to know the towns and villages, I have also got to know the crossroads where the challenges lie.

A number of issues were raised in respect of specific schools. We will reflect on them and try to get back to Members.

In excess of ten Members raised the issue of bus drivers aged over 70. As I said at the outset, a report was compiled in August 2024. The programme for Government contains a commitment to having an interdepartmental review of this. That is being done by the Department of Transport. A report is due in the next number of weeks. We are looking forward to that. When the report is submitted, we will certainly bring it to the attention of Members and will reflect on it accordingly. Many people understand that a huge volume of work has been done to increase the capacity of the school bus services across the country.

A number of issues relating to special education were raised. I am quite aware of the challenges with special education in Dublin, Cork and right across the country. The Department and Bus Éireann are working closely to try to find resolutions in this regard. We all came in for criticism in the debate, but we all - me, as Minister of State, the team in the Department of education and the team in Bus Éireann - take our role very seriously. Realistically, we are rolling out a massive service. The support staff are working extremely hard to find solutions. I am always amazed when I go back to either the departmental or Bus Éireann officials and mention a route, a road or an issue, and without even having to go through their system, I discover that they have the necessary knowledge themselves. I pay tribute to the work they have done. They set up the call centres during the summer to try to make sure that adequate information is given to parents. I take on board the concerns and criticisms as well, and I certainly will be reflecting on them.

The other issue that came across was timing. We are looking at that very seriously. We had a number of meetings during the summer months to improve matters in that regard. We were very successful, and I thank the NCSE and others who brought back the date relating to special needs education to 1 October from 1 February. We hope that will have a meaningful role in having a properly planned out system but we need to look at it as well. I understand the frustration.

At my first meeting with departmental officials in Tullamore, I said that the period from 15 August to 1 October is the prime school transport period, but this year it happened earlier. A greater number of tickets were issued in July this year. We did an awful lot of extra work on it. We did a huge amount of planning and work. We also did a huge amount on the pilot schemes, some of which still have to be bedded in. We have given commitments on pilot schemes. The Department and Bus Éireann are working extremely hard to make sure we have those in place.

Another issue relates to drivers and operators. I will not refer to some individual instances that were raised because I do not want those involved to be identifiable. Some of the contractors, for very legitimate reasons, had to bow out, sometimes owing to extremely challenging health issues. We have to respect those who had to bow out. We wish them well, particularly as they had given long service to the Department of education and Bus Éireann over the years. We have to try to find alternatives. A number of routes have been funded and put in place. We are working very closely with local people to try to find operators that can take up the routes. There are many issues in relation to that.

On the taxi system that has been developed in the context of special education, some children need individual transport. We have to be mindful of that. I pay tribute to the taxi companies that provide services for these children for the work they do and for the commitment they give.

The Government is very much committed to the review that was carried out. I understand the issues relating to taking cars off the roads, climate change and everything else, but we have to ensure that we expand the scheme as best we can across the country because it is highly valued, both at primary and post-primary level. We will reflect very carefully on the issues that were raised.

One or two Deputies referred to contractors they knew who would be willing to go into the system. I am only too happy to take any information in that regard, because it is vitally important. The more information we have, the better. We will follow up on any leads that we have regarding contractors or individuals who may be able to help in the context of the challenges we face. It must be reiterated that, in the context of the school transport system and what we are endeavouring to do, the challenges are only in 1% of it.

Members mentioned issues regarding developing a new transport system for different schools. There is a criterion in that regard, but we are looking at where we can help in it. We are mindful that we will deal with the many legitimate challenges put on the record today in a meaningful way.

I assure Members that the Minister and I fully understand the value of the school transport system. We want to expand it in the way outlined in the report in order to facilitate of maybe another 100,000 in the system over the coming years. We will do that. My team in the Department and I and the team in Bus Éireann will work extremely hard to try to find solutions to the challenges Members have raised. I look forward to working with every one of them. If Deputies across the House have specific information, please share it with me or the team and we will follow up on it to see whether it can benefit not just the transport system but, more importantly, the families who rely on, believe in and appreciate the school transport system, both in mainstream education and special education.

I thank all Members for their contributions. We look forward to further discussion on this matter.