John McGahon (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

To follow on from Senator Lombard, the reason we brought this matter to the attention of the House and sought a Commencement debate is to get clarity. I am a team player when it comes to my party and this Government. I am a team player because of the way I was brought up, the sports I have played and everything else. I will go out and defend to the bloody hilt, but this is one example of a policy with good intentions where we are seeing the unintended consequences of a decision we as a Government have made. It is not good enough to say, not to put a spin on it, that we have put more people on busses and there has been an increase in this and that. We need to be honest, as Senator Lombard said, and tell people we have left seven to eight thousand children off buses who had seats for the past number of years.

I have a list of 60 children, and I am working day and night on it. Bus Éireann representatives have told me it is nothing to do with them. The Department put out a call for free transport and, as a result, they are swamped. I have been told I may go to the Department and try to get the people there to figure it out. That is what Bus Éireann at local level and our Oireachtas Bus Éireann contacts are saying to us. Once that was said to us, we have now had to bring it to this House through Commencement debates, through this Private Members' motion, and by raising it with Ministers - the whole lot. We are at an absolute loss here. We need to be honest and, instead of touting what a nice policy it was to give all these children free transport, say we accept what has happened, we are looking at fixing it, we realise we have created this situation, we will fix it by getting extra funding and we want to fix it in the coming weeks. It is not good enough for these parents and children for us to talk about reviews that may happen in a couple of years or the concessionary tickets. The issue about concessionary tickets, and I said this during the Commencement debate, is that we cannot abide by the same rules for concessionary tickets in previous years when the floodgates have been opened to every child in the country to have free transport. It cannot be done. We changed the rules and, as a result, we cannot keep the same rules. I am not coming into this House to be negative. I hope other Senators present who will have seen me over the past two years in this House will realise I am not the type of politician who comes into this Chamber to give a kick because it is easy so do that.