Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I join in the welcome to the Minister, Deputy Foley. I thank her for staying for the entire debate. Senator Ahearn summed up the whole issue very well. I acknowledge, as have others, that the intention was genuine, good and egalitarian. The Minister wants to do the right thing in a cost-of-living crisis. All of this is fine but, as was well put by my colleague, we have some unintended consequences.In essence, my situation is no different from that of anyone else. I have an office in Cavan town, which is used by our councillors for their representations. There are also direct walk-in representations and phone calls. It has come up a lot. The difficulty is that there is now a bus route in a country area with only about two or three children left who are either passed by the bus, as the last speaker said, or there is no place on the bus for them because of the extra numbers. It is a particularly difficult issue to deal with because if two, three or four children on that bus route are adversely affected by the situation and are caught, how do you resolve it? We cannot reasonably put another bus on that route. We cannot have two really expensive buses on that route. Do we get a larger bus or use a car? What do we do? I hope the Minister will get the funding to deal with it. Small numbers and isolated routes constitute a very tricky issue to deal with in rural Ireland. It is not a simple matter to deal with. I wish the Minister well with it and I hope she gets the money and gets the issue resolved.