Bernard Allen (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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Question 484: To ask the Minister for Education and Science if she will make a statement regarding the continuing uncertainty in regard to the school transport system for students attending a school (details supplied) in County Cork and the inability of parents to enrol their children at the school with the certainty of having a school transport scheme. [38059/05]

Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)
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Under the terms of my Department's post-primary school transport scheme, a pupil is eligible for school transport if he or she resides 4.8 km, 3 miles or more from the post-primary centre in the catchment area in which he or she resides.

The scheme is not designed to facilitate parents who choose to send their children to a post-primary centre outside of the catchment area in which they reside. However, children who are fully eligible for transport to the post-primary centre in the catchment area in which they reside may apply for transport on a concessionary basis to a post-primary centre outside of their own catchment area — otherwise known as catchment boundary transport. These children can only be facilitated if spare seats are available on the bus after all other eligible children travelling to a post-primary school in their own catchment have been catered for. Such children will have to make their own way either to the catchment boundary or to the nearest pick up point within that catchment area.

My Department understands from the transport liaison officer for County Cork that following a re-organisation of transport services in the catchment area concerned, all fully eligible pupils, and the vast majority of pupils who applied for concessionary catchment boundary transport to the school referred to in the details supplied were accommodated this school year.

Parents are advised to familiarise themselves with the catchment area in which they reside for school transport purposes and the terms of the post-primary school transport scheme. Those who choose to send their children to a post-primary centre outside of the catchment area in which they live cannot be guaranteed school transport from term to term.