Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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472. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills the actions that her Department is taking to deal with cases in which a child has been allocated a seat through the free bus ticket scheme but the child in question is not availing of the seat and there are other students waiting to take up a seat on the same route; and her views on whether in cases in which a ticket is not being used, her Department should have the right to cancel the ticket and allocate a seat to an alternative student. [4742/23]

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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The School Transport Scheme is a significant operation managed by Bus Éireann on behalf of the Department of Education.  In the current school year over 147,900 children, including over 18,000 children with special educational needs, are transported on a daily basis to primary and post-primary schools throughout the country.

In addition, school transport scheme services are being provided in the current school year for over 3,800 children who have arrived to Ireland from Ukraine. 

The total cost of the scheme in 2022 was €332.2m

Under the terms of the Department’s School Transport Scheme, children are eligible for transport where they reside not less than 4.8kms from their nearest Post Primary School as determined by the Department and Bus Éireann, having regard to ethos and language.  

Children who are not eligible for school transport may be considered for transport on a concessionary basis in accordance with the terms of the Post Primary School Transport Scheme and subject to the following conditions:

- an application is made by the deadline date

- there is an existing service in place

- there is spare capacity on the service;

Any remaining seats left after eligible children are accommodated are being allocated to concessionary children in the usual way.  Where the number of applications for transport on a concessionary basis exceeds the number of seats available, Bus Éireann will determine the allocation of the tickets using an agreed selection process. 

It is recognised that all pupils issued with tickets will not travel every morning and every evening.In addition, certain after school activities may also result in pupils not travelling on certain days.

Bus Éireann organises for vehicles to be full to capacity with tickets based on applications received and based on the seating capacity of the vehicle.For safety reasons, it is not possible to issue additional tickets over and above the seating capacity of the vehicle which could result in a potential overload situation arising and all pupils not being carried on the service.

If a family decide that they no longer require their bus tickets for the current school year, they should return these tickets to their local Bus Éireann school transport office and their seats will be reallocated to other pupils wishing to avail of school transport. 

At present, it is not possible for Bus Éireann to examine data on ticket usage as tickets are paper based. However, Bus Éireann recently undertook a pilot E-Ticketing project.  Based on the outcome of this pilot project, it is intended that a tender competition for national roll-out of eTicketing on all school transport scheme services will follow.  This will provide the Department and Bus Éireann with greater data on real time travel patterns.