John Cummins (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I could keep going. I could say Villierstown, Modelligo and Colligan as well. People from all those areas have been in contact.

The fundamental error that was made here was reopening applications after the announcement was made that school transport would be free, which resulted in many students who had availed of concessionary tickets for many years being unable to avail of them. These were families that were happy to pay for school transport. That said, I appreciate and totally understand that the Minister made that decision in good faith to try to reduce the cost on families. Nobody is questioning that but the difficulty has arisen from that decision.

On 5 September, I wrote to the Minister regarding a particular issue that kept coming up in my constituency office. Unfortunately, I have only received an acknowledgement to date so I do not know whether the Department of Education is investigating the issue which relates to Yahoo email accounts. Nine families in my constituency with children who are eligible for school transport made their applications on time but they never received any follow-up communication from Bus Éireann to confirm their request for bus tickets. Normally they would pay their fee and request their tickets but as that coincided with the announcement of free transport, these families thought, understandably, that they did not have to do anything further. On realising that there was an issue, they made contact with Bus Éireann. The company acknowledged that there was a problem with Yahoo email accounts. This was also confirmed to my staff. However, the company has subsequently said that it is the parents' responsibility to have valid email accounts but these families do have valid email accounts. It is not their fault that there was some error on Bus Éireann's side that resulted in emails not landing into their accounts. I am certain that there are nine such families, at least, who have been affected by this issue. They were advised to apply when the portal reopened but of course when they did, they were told that all places had been allocated and it was not possible to cater for them. It is unconscionable that students who are eligible for school transport are being negatively impacted through no fault of their own. Provision has to be made urgently for those families. If it means putting on additional buses or additional capacity on certain routes, that has to be done. This problem was not of their making. These parents applied on time, in good faith and their children are eligible for school transport but are being negatively impacted.

Transport operators that have buses and additional capacity available have been in contact with me to say that Bus Éireann is not engaging with them locally. I ask the Minister to put a fund in place urgently to ensure that we can cater for as many students as possible. All of us, including the Minister, know the issues out there.