Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the reason concessionary students who are not allocated tickets under the school transport scheme in the lottery are not allowed to avail of the bus service on a first come first served basis on any day that the full complement of seats are not filled on the school bus; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [47776/12]

Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Bus Éireann operates the school transport scheme on behalf of my Department; it is responsible for the time-tabling and routing of services. Seats are allocated and tickets issued up to the maximum seating capacity of a school bus and once the seating capacity is reached, no further tickets can be issued.

On any given school day it is impossible to anticipate the exact number of ticket holders who will travel and absenteeism will sometimes result in a small amount of seats being available on a particular day. However, it is not possible to allow pupils who do not hold tickets to travel on an ad-hoc basis as this has the potential to result in an overload situation which would pose an unacceptable safety risk and contravene road traffic regulations.