Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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195. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the outcome of the school transport review; the measures he proposes to implement to deal with difficulties which arose for many families prior to the commencement of the 2016-2017 school year with particular reference to the availability of concessionary tickets; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4812/17]

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

Currently in the region of 114,000 children, including some 10,000 children with special educational needs, are being transported in over 4,000 vehicles on a daily basis to primary and post-primary schools throughout the country covering over 100 million kilometres annually.

The Programme for Government committed to a review of the concessionary charges and rules element of the School Transport Scheme.  This review was commenced in June 2016 and published in December of that year.  As part of the review process I also established an Oireachtas Cross Party Working Group to feed into the review and that group met to discuss school transport issues.  The review published in December made recommendations on both the charges and the rules element of concessionary school transport. 

As outlined in the review there have been a number of reports on the school transport scheme over the years and the current scheme is based on a detailed Value for Money Review published in 2011.  Therefore this review did not deal with the range of issues dealt with in that report.

With regard to the charges for concessionary school the recommended course of action was to continue with the current position whereby charges remain in place for those in receipt of concessionary places.  I agree with this recommendation on the basis that those applying for concessionary transport are making a conscious decision to do so and understand the implications of this choice at the time of application.

The report also recommended that the number of concessionary places should be reduced in line with the rules introduced in 2012 on a phased basis.  Previous plans to advance this option were put on hold, pending the completion of the review.  However upon consideration of the review and discussions at the Cross Party Working Group I decided that there should be no planned programme of downsizing in the coming years except in line with normal operational decisions within the current scheme.