Seán Kyne (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I concur with Senator Lombard. There is an animal welfare issue and a moral issue there. The vast majority of farmers would not knowingly send an animal in calf to slaughter. If this is required under directives or nitrates derogations or for our carbon footprint, well it has to be reversed. We cannot allow that sort of thing to happen and farmers to be forced to send animals to slaughter that are in calf.

I want to raise matters of education. On numerous occasions a number of us have raised the issue of school transport.I have never come across a situation where there was such a shortage of bus drivers, which is impacting predominantly on the provision of school bus routes but not just these routes. I again call on the Minister for Education to engage with Bus Éireann to see whether the retirement age for bus drivers can be increased. I ask because we have the nonsensical situation for the past number of years that the same bus drivers cannot bring children on the school bus run but they can drive them to a match or to visit somewhere else or whatever. Increasing the retirement age would lead to an immediate increase in the number of bus drivers. I ask for that because a number of school bus routes in the Moycullen area have been cancelled and that is not good enough. For example, the bus routes from Moycullen to St. Paul's Second School, and Moycullen to an Educate Together national school in Galway do not have school transport.

The Acting Leader is a member of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Education, Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, and I will raise the issue of school places with my colleagues on that committee. What is a mother to do who does not have a school place for her young son, as we approach the mid-term break? I have not come across such a situation like this before in my area. This lady has engaged with the Minister, Tusla, the welfare officer and all the schools but there is no school place. What is this lady to do? Again, I will raise this matter directly with colleagues but this mother and her child are faced with a very difficult situation.