Terry Brennan (Fine Gael)

Much of what I intended to say has been said. I support what three or four of my colleagues said about the time between 9.30 a.m. and 3 p.m. or 4 p.m. I take my grandchildren to a secondary school in a rural area and I see what happens there. The four or five buses that go to the school - full, thankfully - do a good job, but I would like to see greater efficiency in the use of school buses and there is an opportunity in that regard. The best motorway in the country goes through the rural part of my constituency, and through Meath and Dublin. There are some issues involving heavy goods vehicles that I intended to take up with the Minister today because they affect rural transport. An example is what happens when a heavy goods vehicle joins a motorway in a rural area where buses are going to schools. There can be problems when vehicles cannot make room because they are not allowed to move over to the outer lane. That is a safety issue, but perhaps we should take it up in another forum.

On the point about making better use of school buses, we also need to consider the drivers. In some cases, bus owners do the driving themselves, but in most cases seven or eight drivers are employed and they are tied up between 9.30 a.m. and 3 p.m or 4 p.m. so they could not do anything else. We should consider the bus routes between schools and towns to determine what we can do for rural, and in many instances isolated, populations that do not have transport or any other way of going into town. The Minister of State is aware that some of the less economic routes have been withdrawn by Bus Éireann and private providers. One cannot expect them to provide such routes, but we could make better use of the return journeys of school transport services.