Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour)
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367. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if she will provide a breakdown by county for school transport allocated in budget 2021; and the number of additional seats which will be funded through this allocation by county in tabular form. [31621/20]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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School Transport is a significant operation managed by Bus Éireann on behalf of the Department of Education. In the 2019/20 school year over 120,000 children, including over 14,200 children with special educational needs, were transported in over 5,000 vehicles on a daily basis to primary and post-primary schools throughout the country covering over 100 million kilometres.

The cost of providing school transport scheme services in 2019 was €219.2m. The allocated budget for the scheme in 2020 is €224.6m.

I recently announced that Budget 2021 brings a significant increase in investment in education. This includes an additional €15 million which will be invested in the school transport scheme in 2021 to provide for growing numbers of school children and the requirements of children with special educational needs. This is in addition to financial supports being put in place to meet the Covid-19 public health requirements.

The information requested by the Deputy broken down by county is not available.