Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As a former Member of the House, at times I was disappointed when a Minister would come in, deliver a speech, listen intently to arguments made for and against a particular issue, then deliver another speech and walk out the door. I will endeavour as best I can to respond to each presentation and apologise if my delivery stalls every now and again. Certain themes recurred throughout the contributions and I will deal with these once.

To respond to Senator O Sullivan, no case can be made that this Administration is in any way more stringent than the previous one in its application of the terms of the scheme which arose from the budgetary decision in 2010. We have been as flexible as we possibly could. The Senator mentioned conducting a review. My officials and I and Bus Éireann engage and communicate weekly as anomalous situations arise during the transitionary phase. I will explain what I mean by this. The review is happening as we speak. There is no need for us to state publicly we are having a review. It is ongoing and changes will be made if any issue needs to be tweaked or amended to make the scheme more flexible or equitable. Last year I committed to thousands of parents that I would reduce the concessionary charge on primary school transport from ¤200 to ¤100, and I did so in the most recent budget.

The issue which has arisen most often in the past number of weeks in the post-primary sector is the ¤350 charge that applies on a concessionary basis to families with medical cards whose children, if attending their nearest school, would be paying nothing. I am looking again - I am not making any commitments here - at perhaps being able to reduce that ¤350 down to a smaller figure. If I do so I will have to find that saving elsewhere in the school transport budget which may mean adding on an equal amount to the charge across the rest of the system. I suppose I am bringing a degree of social solidarity into the system.

I do not agree with the supposition that we should endeavour at all times to transport children within their own county. This is a small island of 4.5 million people on the edge of Europe. We can get a bit sensitive at times about our county loyalties. When children go on to third level education, nobody suggests his or her child should only go to university in Clare and not in Galway, for example. One cannot argue, in particular at a time of severe economic difficulty, that there is a more rational or logical approach to take than simply transporting children to their nearest school. It is fair, equitable and transparent. Everybody understands this is the case. With regard to the complaint by the schools that they were unaware of this, they were notified twice in the past year that this change was happening. It was on the Department's website since the middle of 2011, so principals and boards of management of all of our schools had ample notification that this change was about to occur.

Senator MacSharry raised the issue of those unable to accompany siblings to a particular school. There was an option in the value for money report. However, we made the system flexible by allowing children already in it to work their way through the post-primary school system and by allowing them to retain that eligibility to the end of their education. What we could have done was to say that as and from September 2012, every child in the post-primary system shall attend their nearest school. From a logistical point of view, that would have been far easier to do because there would not be this anomalous situation where a bus passes by a house to pick up a child's sibling but that child has to get into a car with his or her mother or father and travel in a different direction. That is happening but not to the extent people would argue, and I will deal with that statistic. The flexibility we have in the system, where we are allowing children to finish their post-primary schooling, is causing anomalous situations to arise. Once that phase is over and those children have worked their way through the system, those anomalies will disappear and from then on children will be transported to their nearest primary school and post-primary school in a fair and equitable manner.

In early January or February, parents will be able to log on to their computer, access a website, click on a map where their house is located and they will be automatically told what is the nearest school. They will be able to make a payment and the bus ticket will arrive in the post. We want to make it as simple, seamless, fair and as easy to understand as that.

Senator MacSharry mentioned the fact there are significant synergies and savings to be achieved in combining various elements of public transport in rural Ireland. He is correct; there possibly are. They are not as significant as some people might argue but there are savings to be made. The Minister of State, Deputy Kelly, has convened a group of experts from my Department, his Department and from the HSE to look at publicly provided transport across rural Ireland and the different entities which provide public transport for which we the taxpayers are paying to see if there are any synergies and saving which can be achieved. For example, in my community of rural east Galway, the school bus drops children every morning at school, as in most rural communities. On a Friday morning, the school bus returns to its base and a half an hour later another bus arrives and travels around the community bringing about ten elderly people into the local town to collect their pension and so on. There is no reason that school bus, having dropped off the children at 9 a.m., could not do that run. That is just one instance of savings. There are savings to be achieved and the Minister of State, Deputy Kelly, is working very closely with my Department and the HSE to see if we can achieve those savings.

Senator Whelan mentioned that principals did not have the opportunity to plan. I argue they did in that they were notified twice in the past year and it has been on our website since the middle of 2011. He mentioned a review, which is ongoing.

Senators Kelly and Moran raised the issue of special needs with which I will deal as best I can. There are very straightforward and compassionate procedures in place through the National Council for Special Education and our SENO system. SENOs play a major role in determining the school transport eligibility of children with special needs. An individual assessment is carried out. A blanket approach is not taken nor is there insensitivity or inflexibility. An individual assessment is carried out on every special needs child who uses school transport by a SENO who is professionally qualified to make a determination as to what school can be best resourced to care for the child's needs. The SENO will determined the nearest school which is resourced or can be resourced to care for that child's needs. Once the SENO makes that determination - I do not have any professional expertise to make that determination nor do any of my officials - we will then provide transport to that school for that child free of charge. That is the way it has been and the way it shall remain.

Senators Barrett and Noone and a number of others asked why we do not tender school transport out to a number of different entities. I do not have any ideological hang-ups about who should provide school transport in this country. I am responsible for safely transporting 114,000 children to school on a daily basis. If I may use the simile, I have an aeroplane in the sky every day with 114,000 people on it and I am not about to allow any entity to take the controls of that aeroplane unless I can be certain it has the logistical capacity and experience to be able to do so. Every report published on school transport in recent decades, including the value for money report in 2009, has arrived at one conclusion. I stress that at this point in time no other entity in this country is capable of delivering the school transport system, although there may be at some point in the future.

I have said to a number of operators in the private sector that my door is always open. If they come to me with a rational suggestion or plan which I can trust will get these children to school safely every day, my officials and I will spend a considerable amount of time looking at it. Nobody has come to me with such a plan and if they do, I assure Senators Barrett and Noone, I will listen intently to them.