Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to have the Minister of State in the Seanad. I am fed up, as no doubt every other politician is, with the state of school transport in this country. It is an absolute outrage, to be honest, that the Department of Education has been sitting on a report on school transport since 2021.

I rise today specifically to deal with one issue in Galway around the Educate Together national school in Newcastle. For years, we had a bus service from beyond Moycullen – families in Rosscahill are affected as well – but it was abandoned a week into the service in September of this year. Since 12 September, there has been no bus coming in from Moycullen. There are now at least 20 families on the road in their cars when they do not need to be. All of those kids could be on one bus coming in and out.

The mother in one particular family coming from Rosscahill has to take an hour of annual leave every single day to bring her kids in and out because she starts work at 8 a.m. She then has to pay €15 extra to a childminder every day to get somebody to collect her kids and bring them home to Rosscahill. I do not know if the Minister of State knows the area, but Rosscahill is in a rural part of Galway past Moycullen, so it is not really feasible to get somebody else to collect and deliver children.

It is obviously a real frustration for these families but to me it is also a frustration because of the environmental impact it is having. It is completely unnecessary travel. I am the education spokesperson for the Green Party, as the Minister of State knows. I brought up numerous times at the education committee that I simply see no real initiative in the Department of Education when it comes to the environment. I am delighted that we finally got solar panels on school buildings over the line last week. However, when it comes to school transport, it is a no-brainer. Some 30% of the traffic in Galway is kids being brought to school in a car when they could all be on buses if we got that bit right.

We would love to see the Department of Education allow school transport to go into the Department of Transport so it could be joined up. Buses are not going a million miles away from where these school kids are going to and from. If it could all be joined up so that we have one transport system that everybody could use, we could get away from these issues. The issue in Moycullen and Rosscahill is the lack of a bus driver. I know that the same issue applies in many areas. The way we do transport in this country is very inefficient. I do not think it should take two years – it is more than two years now – for the Department of Education to get to grips with what the problem is. Ask any politician is and they will tell you what the problem is. We are at our wits' end.

I am also at my wits' end because there is never any response from Bus Éireann. All of these parents will individually ask, but I cannot get the answers. Now I have to bring in the Minister of State to answer for the Minister for Education. There is no doubt that every other politician is doing the same thing. I ask for a bit of communication on where the review is, and in particular on this bus service for Moycullen. You cannot give people the expectation for years that their kids will continue to be brought in on a school bus and then just drop it in the middle of September.