John Halligan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator for raising this matter. School transport is a significant operation managed by Bus Éireann on behalf of the Department. Over 114,000 children, including almost 12,000 children with special educational needs, are transported in over 4,500 vehicles on a daily basis to primary and post-primary schools throughout the country covering over 100 million km at a cost of approximately €190 million annually. The purpose of the post-primary school transport scheme is, having regard to available resources, to support the transport to and from school of children who reside somewhere remote from their nearest school.

Children are eligible for transport where they reside not less than 4.8 km from and are attending their nearest post-primary centre as determined by the Department and Bus Éireann, having regard to ethos and language. The closing date for applications for school transport is the last Friday in April each year and the closing date for submitting payment details is the last Friday in July. However, Bus Éireann continues to process applications and payments after these deadline dates and where possible children are accommodated on school transport services where spare seats are available. Children who wish to repeat their leaving certificate examinations should liaise with their local Bus Éireann office if they wish to avail of school transport for the next school year. Where there is spare capacity on existing services, Bus Éireann will issue tickets for these children. However, if all seats on a particular service have been allocated already then it may not be possible to facilitate children repeating their leaving certificate. It is not practical for Bus Éireann to maintain spare seats on every service to ensure that children who may repeat their leaving certificate can be accommodated. Children who pay for seats on school transport services who subsequently are not accommodated will receive a full refund.

There is not any eligible child in Ireland who does not get school transport or a payment to help with transport to school. The difficulty we have is with concessionary provision. The scheme was laid out in the first place to deal with eligible children going to their nearest school. The difficulty we have now is that we have almost 3,000 children availing of concessionary provision. I always make the point that it is important to know that if a bus is coming from a village, town or city and is a 20-seater bus with 18 eligible children on it, we will facilitate two children under concessionary provision on that bus. The difficulty is that if an eligible child from that village, town or place makes himself or herself available, we have no choice under legislation and criteria laid down to put that eligible child on the bus.

I take on board what the Senator says in this regard and might speak to him further about it. If he were to give me specific details, I would be delighted to talk to him and Bus Éireann to address it. My view has always been, and I have taken many questions on this, that if I had my way, I would try to facilitate as many children as possible but we are restricted under the scheme laid down under the value for money review put in place in 2011, backed by the Dáil. The system is excellent. Some 99.9% of people are very happy with the system. It is one of the best in Europe.It provides great value for money and as I say, an eligible child or a child with special needs is guaranteed school transport. The difficulty is that based on the criteria laid down in legislation, we cannot guarantee a place for concessionary children. When a bus is full, either with eligible children or with eligible children and some concessionary children, then we always have to remove a concessionary from the bus, and that creates a difficulty.