asked the Minister for Education why transport facilities for children from the townlands of Lannaught, Killanena and Faha who attend Drumindoora national school, County Clare, have not been provided.

Under the provisions of the free transport scheme, there must be a minimum of ten eligible children in a locality to warrant the introduction of a transport service. Since there are only three eligible children in the areas in question, it would not be open to the Department to sanction a service.

I am afraid the Parliamentary Secretary's information is not entirely correct. This is a large scattered parish. Four schools were closed in the parish recently and one new one was built. The parish is divided by the largest lake in County Clare. At the other side of the lake one school has been retained, the Drumindoora school. Prior to the building of the new school, the children of Lannaught and Killanena had transport facilities which were taken from them. There are at least 20 children——

The Deputy is embarking on a speech.

The area is mountainy and was referred to in Merriman's poem——

This is all very interesting, but it is not relevant at Question Time.

asdflkjh

Ba thaithneamhach aoibhinn suíomh na sléibhte,

Ag bagairt a gcinn thar dhroim a chéile.

—where the mountains threaten their heads over the backs of the others. They are the mountains over which 12 of those children have to travel in the winter.

I sincerely want to help the Deputy but the Deputy must help the Chair.

Will the Parliamentary Secretary reconsider the matter from a humane point of view?

I can tell the Deputy that the information submitted to the Department by CIE indicates that there are only three eligible children. There seems to be considerable discrepancy between the information initially supplied to the Department in support of the application and the information supplied by CIE.

If I can give further information, will the Parliamentary Secretary accept it? I can give further evidence of the distance and the number of children.

I will certainly have a look at any further evidence the Deputy may care to give me.

22.

asked the Minister for Education when the children of the townlands of Ballinamona, Frevanagh, Ballybroder and Rostella, County Westmeath, will be provided with free transport to Durrow national school, County Offaly.

The Department have sanctioned an extension of the transport service to Durrow national school to cater for the children in question. It is anticipated that CIE will be in a position to provide the extension required after the Chrismas holidays.

23.

asked the Minister for Education when he intends to provide national school transport for children (names of parents supplied) in the Ross area of Rathdowney, County Laois, for whom service at Ross Cross was applied for on 15th October, 1974.

There is no suitable primary transport service for these children. They have been offered transport on a post-primary service which passes close to their homes. This service would mean a waiting time of approximately 25 minutes before the school opens in the morning and 45 minutes after the school closes in the evening.

This is the best service that can be offered to these children at present.

Is the Parliamentary Secretary saying that a service is being offered to these children?

There is a post primary service which the children can get if they wish. In all cases, the post primary timetable does not coincide with the timetable for the primary service. As I have told the Deputy, there is not a sufficient number of children to warrant the establishment of a special primary service.

Is the Parliamentary Secretary not aware that it is almost two months since I wrote to him indicating that there is a primary school service passing within a mile of the lane in which those three families live? What I was looking for was an extension of that service to cater for the three children I have mentioned.

The Deputy's question is in relation to the provision of a national school transport service, not the extension of an existing service, and I do not have any information with me now to indicate that there is a primary school service such as the Deputy has mentioned within the regulation distance of those children. I will have the matter further investigated.

My question is a double-barrelled one. First of all, it asks for information and its secondary aim is to remind the Parliamentary Secretary that I am awaiting a reply from the Department since 15th October. The Parliamentary Secretary does not seem to have that reply even now.

I am indicating the position as it stands. These children have available a transport service on the post primary bus.

24.

asked the Minister for Education why school transport is not being provided for children (names supplied) in County Offaly to Tullamore national school.

Owing to an increase in the number of children availing of this service, a larger vehicle—45-seater bus—had to be utilised from September last. This vehicle is unable to negotiate the laneway leading to the homes of the children in question so that they have to make their way over distances in the range of 0.7-0.8 mile to the nearest pick-up point. This is however considered to be a reasonable standard of service.

25.

asked the Minister for Education why a school child aged five years (name supplied) in County Kerry was refused public transport to the local primary school despite the fact that children of other families living in the same yard have free public transport to this school.

This child resides in the area of Ballinalane national school which was closed and amalgamated with Firies national school in 1971. She is accordingly entitled to free transport on the service which operates from the closed school area to Firies central school. In view of this, and in view of the fact that the school authorities in Firies national school objected very strongly to the suggestion that she should be given transport to any school other than the central school, transport to Faha national school for her was refused.

If this townland is in the area of the closed Ballinalane national school and there are two or three families from this townland getting free transport to Faha national school, could the Parliamentary Secretary explain why cannot this child get the same free transport to Faha school, which is the nearest national school?

This is quite an involved situation. The area where the children reside belongs to the Firies national school because Ballinalane national school was amalgamated with Firies and the idea of an amalgamation is to ensure that there will be sufficient pupils in the central school to maintain numbers and teacher strength in that school—Firies in this case. It would appear that, as the Deputy indicated, prior to the closure of Ballinalane national school the other family got transport to Faha national school. This seems to have been an irregular decision but as these children are near the end of their school career it is probably as well that they should be allowed to continue in the school in which they started even though that may have been on the basis of a decision that was irregular at that time. But the child in which the Deputy is interested is commencing a school career and, at least on the face of it, it should not be a great hardship to that child to attend the Firies school. As I indicated, a convenient transport service to the Firies school is available to that child and I hope he or she will be able to avail of it.

Is the Parliamentary Secretary not aware that it is grossly inconvenient for this child of five to be sent six miles away to a national school when there is a school bus passing her door, half empty going to the local national school which is only two and a half miles away and on which her neighbour's children are carried? This includes three families. If an error were made at some time—and I do not believe it was—there is a case to be made for this child. There is great local resentment due to what has happened. I made representations in this case in September and I got no reply from the Department of Education.

Although the distance may be six miles—I am not in a position to dispute that—there is convenient transport available to take the child that six miles. When this amalgamation was made of Ballinalane school, which is the school area in which this child resides, with Firies school, the arrangement which was made in 1971 and not by the present Minister, was that children from the Ballinalane area would go to the Firies school and that transport would be available to them. If the Deputy was concerned about it, he should have taken it up then.

Is the Parliamentary Secretary not aware that there are children in the Ballinalane area who are still going to Faha school only two and a half miles away and that their bus is half empty but this child cannot get transport? The inspector was told at one stage by the Department of Education that there must be a mistake.

I dealt with that point in my reply to the first supplementary question.

One general point on this question: does somebody other than the Minister have a veto on where a child goes? I would gather that from the first part of the answer.

The word "veto" would not be used in such a situation but there are a number of factors which have to be considered including the maintenance of pupil numbers in different schools and if an amalgamation arrangement was made to maintain teacher and pupil numbers in a school, obviously the transport arrangements were made accordingly. That has happened under successive Governments.

Use a bit of commonsense.

The child was only two years old when that arrangement was made. The question did not arise at the time.

26.

asked the Minister for Education why a child (name supplied) in County Waterford has not been given school transport facilities to Lismore National School.

The child in question who resides 5.4 miles from Lismore Convent National School has transport facilities available to her within 1¼ miles of her home. Full facilities to her home in the evenings were sanctioned, but the Department was subsequently advised that the stretch of road involved was not suitable for the operation of the minibus used.

27.

asked the Minister for Education if he has any proposals to improve the primary and post-primary school transport system.

The operation of the school transport system is constantly under review with the view to implementing improvements, wherever possible. A major consideration in effecting any improvement is that of cost. The provision in this Department's Estimates for this service in 1975 is £7.382 million.

I have recently introduced a concession for pupils attending national schools who are basically eligible for free transport and for whom there is no transport available to their nearest school. Under this concession, such pupils may avail of transport on a fare-paying basis to the next nearest school if a suitable service is in operation to that school and provided they make their own way to the boundary point between the two school districts. This concession is subject to the condition that there is room on the bus after the eligible children availing of transport to their nearest school are accommodated.

Does the Minister not envisage cutting out all this niggling about distances and so on and giving all children free transport?

The Deputy will appreciate that the cost of eliminating all eligibility requirements in relation to distance over the whole system would be enormous.

Is the Parliamentary Secretary aware that inspectors from his Department were around Kerry recently measuring distances from schools to doors and we were told that this was on the instructions of the Department of Education and they had to measure the distance to the yard, the foot or the inch, if necessary, with a view to trying to knock the school transport system?

I am not aware of that.

It appears that it is the intention of the Department of Education to knock the post primary school transport system and to disrupt the primary school service as was indicated in Question No. 25 by me.

I am not so aware.

The public are aware of it.

Can the Parliamentary Secretary explain the massive withdrawal of free transport that is taking place throughout the country?

I do not accept that there has been massive withdrawal.

Of course, there has been. Is the Parliamentary Secretary denying that children who have had free transport to primary and post primary schools in the past have had that concession withdrawn?

I accept that, as the position has always been in relation to transport regulations, a certain minimum number of children in any locality is required for the maintenance of such a service and if the minimum number is not maintained over a certain number of terms it may happen that such a service is withdrawn. That provision existed in the scheme operated by my predecessor and it continues to exist.

That is not correct. Is the Parliamentary Secretary trying to get away from the well-established precedent and the regulation which was made at the time that in the case of a school closing all pupils in that catchment area must get free school transport? Is he welshing on that now?

No, I am not. I am talking about a situation other than the situation to which the Deputy refers.

Question No. 28 please.

Further arising out of——

The Chair has given Deputy O'Leary a lot of latitude which he does not seem to appreciate. He wants to dominate Question Time. I have called Question No. 28. The Chair must be obeyed and will not be defied in this matter. The Chair has given too much latitude.

One final supplementary. Could the Parliamentary Secretary say if it is the local school manager, the local teaching organisation or the Minister for Education who states to what schools pupils get free public transport.?

The school area in which a child resides is, for the purpose of transport, in the final analysis determined by the Department of Education but needless to say these areas may be defined on the basis of amalgamation arrangements which were previously entered into in which, of course, all local interests, including the manager and the teacher may have been involved.

28.

asked the Minister for Education if he is aware of the unsatisfactory bus service being provided for pupils attending the new community school, Carndonagh, from the Shrove, Greencastle, Moville, Carrowmena and Lecamy areas, County Donegal; and if he will arrange to have the double-decker bus which is supposed to serve the public and the school children replaced by a single-decker bus to be used solely for school transport purposes.

The difficulties which arose in regard to this service are being investigated and I will let the Deputy know the outcome in due course.

When considering the difficulties would the Parliamentary Secretary instruct CIE to provide a dual service? Would he agree that the public transport scheduled service is not always the best for school transport? While his Department may want to economise by using the scheduled service this is not always the best. Would he ensure my suggestion is adopted?

I would prefer to say nothing about this in the House because, as the Deputy may or may not be aware, there is the possibility of an industrial dispute being involved.

Did I understand the Parliamentary Secretary to say that the matter is being investigated?

Yes.

By whom?

By the Department, Córas Iompair Éireann and the Londonderry and Lough Swilly Railway Company.