Noel Grealish (Galway West, Independent)

I thank the Senator for his very kind words. I look forward to working with him over the next four and a half to five years, I hope.

I am taking this matter on behalf of the Minister for Education. As the Senator is aware, the school transport scheme is a significant operation managed by Bus Éireann on behalf of the Department of Education. In the current school year, more than 172,500 children are transported daily in approximately 7,900 vehicles across 10,300 routes to primary and post-primary schools throughout the country. These daily trips cover over 100 million km.

The retirement age for school bus drivers has been set by Bus Éireann at 70 years of age and this also applies to all Bus Éireann road passenger services. The policy and criteria also apply to drivers nominated by private operators who operate services as part of the school transport scheme, provided they hold the requisite license and satisfy an annual medical examination until the retirement age of 70 years.

The Road Safety Authority, under the remit of the Department of Transport, committed to reviewing the upper age limit for drivers as it relates to larger vehicles and school buses. This review is now complete. Under the new programme for Government, we have committed to "Carry out an independent assessment on the feasibility of removing the exclusion of drivers aged over 70 from the School Transport Scheme". The Minister will be engaging with the Minister for Transport and with Bus Éireann to advance this.

In my role as an ordinary TD in previous Dáileanna, I constantly raised this issue and I fully support the Senator on this. I will also support it as a Minister of State in the Government. I can see no reason why a person cannot drive a school bus if he or she only does one or two hours in the morning and another one or two hours. It would solve a huge crisis. We have cases where buses are parked because they cannot get drivers. There are parents screaming to get buses to bring kids to school. I know it is not under my Department but I fully support the Senator on this and I will raise it in any avenue I can. I have already spoken to the Minister of State, Deputy Seán Canney, on this and I will meet him about this. He works in the Department of Transport. The Senator makes huge sense in what he is raising. I hope we will be able to find a solution to this.