Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As a mother who always depended on school transport, I can hear the frustration in Senator O’Reilly’s voice. It depends where you live. People in large towns and cities do not realise how important school transport is until their children need it. For 18 years, I have been putting my youngsters on a school bus. They would not have secondary school only for that. I understand where the Senator is coming from.

Before I address the specific issues raised on the Galway Educate Together National School in Newcastle, I wish to provide an outline of the extent of the school transport scheme. The school transport scheme is a significant operation managed by Bus Éireann on behalf of the Department of Education. As part of the operation of the scheme, Bus Éireann manages the procurement, tender process and contract management arrangements to include services provided by contractors under the school transport scheme. There are currently in the region of 7,000 vehicles operating on the scheme. The competitive procurement process is conducted in accordance with the negotiated procedure under national and EU procurement legislation.

In the 2022-23 school year, more than 149,000 children, including more than 18,000 children with special educational needs, were transported on a daily basis to primary and post-primary schools throughout the country. In addition, school transport scheme services were provided for more than 5,400 children who arrived to Ireland from Ukraine. The total cost of the scheme in 2022 was €338 million.

The school transport scheme is an important service for families, as I said, and children. The purpose of the Department's school transport scheme is, having regard to available resources, to support the transport to and from school of children who reside remote from their nearest school. There has been an overall increase in both applications and tickets issued for the 2023-24 school year in comparison with the previous year. Already over 134,000 tickets have issued to mainstream pupils for the 2023-24 school year which is an increase of 12% when compared with the start of the last school year. The number of tickets issued so far has already exceeded the total number of tickets issued in the 2022-23 school year.

To date, over 5,500 new applications have been received for SEN transport for the 2023-24 school year, with over 1,400 of these having been received since July alone. This compares with 5,100 new applications received at this time last year. To date transport has been provided for over 4,300 new applicants for the 2023-24 school year, with transport being provided for over 19,000 pupils in the current school year. The Department continues to receive applications all year round.

As the Deputy is aware, a review of the school transport scheme has been completed. The review was conducted with a view to examining the current scheme, its broader effectiveness and sustainability, and to ensure it serves students and their families adequately. The technical working group and the steering group have recently completed their work on the final report of the review. This final report includes recommendations on the future operation of the scheme. The report has recently been submitted by the steering group for consideration by the Minister, Deputy Foley.

Regarding the topic raised by the Senator today, Bus Éireann has confirmed that no services were cancelled. However, it has reported that, as the Senator said, there is currently no contractor or driver to operate the service in question. This is against a backdrop of a significant shortage of drivers in the labour market overall and competing demands for drivers to deliver additional public transport initiatives such as Connecting Ireland, BusConnects and Local Link services. Bus Éireann has confirmed that the route in question is currently in the procurement process and once a suitable contractor or driver is sourced, transport will commence. Bus Éireann continues to engage directly with the families affected, with regular communications updating them on the position with their transport service.

The Department has established an exceptional no-service interim grant to assist with the cost of private transport arrangements families may have to put in place until their service begins.