James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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42. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if he will examine the school transport scheme, which has been proven not to be adequately working in view of the recent number of children who were not accommodated en route to a school; if he will make available additional funding to allow operators use higher capacity vehicles in order to alleviate this problem; if he will provide an update on the work of the cross-party forum to deal with transport issues; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35158/16]

John Halligan (Waterford, Independent)
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School transport is a significant operation managed by Bus Éireann on behalf of the Department.

Currently over 113,000 children, including some 10,000 children with special educational needs, are being transported in approximately 4,000 vehicles on a daily basis to primary and post-primary schools throughout the country covering over 100 million kilometres annually.

In general, children are eligible for school transport if they are attending their nearest school and satisfy the requisite distance criteria. Bus Éireann plans routes and bus sizes based on eligible children who have applied and submitted payment details on time.

Children who are not eligible for school transport may apply for transport on a concessionary basis only.

Transport on a concessionary basis is subject to a number of conditions which are detailed in the School Transport Scheme such as the existence of spare seats on the bus after all eligible children have been catered for and payment of the school transport charge. Routes will not be extended or altered, additional vehicles will not be introduced, nor will larger vehicles or extra trips using existing vehicles be provided to cater for children who have no eligibility for school transport and are only travelling on a concessionary basis.

The review of the concessionary charges and rules element of the School Transport Scheme committed to under the Programme for Government has been completed and is under consideration. As announced in July, a cross party group was established to feed into this review. A meeting with this group has taken place and subsequently submissions on the school transport scheme generally were received by my Department. These are now being examined.

Given that the cost of school transport provision will exceed €175m in 2016 there are no plans to increase the size of the school transport fleet to accommodate children who are not eligible for school transport.