I am glad the Minister for Transport is here. This week Bus Éireann announced that it is to scrap a number of its Expressway routes, significantly reducing connectivity between our major cities and the regions. The removal of the X8 service between Dublin and Cork, for example, will have a major impact on students and commuters travelling from Tipperary to either Cork or Dublin and patients travelling for hospital appointments if they can ever get one these days. Cork and Shannon Airports are facing a serious crisis and our rail services are nearly non-existent in terms of connectivity.

The programme for Government commits to prioritising public transport projects that enhance regional and rural connectivity yet six months in, we are learning that the Government is shutting down services instead of promoting them. At the same time, appallingly, 3,100 students have been refused school transport tickets this year. I understand the Government had agreed last year to have a review in an effort to sort this out and do something about the situation. It is providing money for physical distancing to Bus Éireann contractors only. Where will that come from?

What extra funding has been allocated to ensure the 3,100 students will get a school bus ticket? From a green point of view, it is astounding. How can the Minister for Transport stand over instances where in the same household two siblings can get a ticket but one cannot? That is bullying of young children and the pressure it is putting on their parents is disgraceful. Then the parents, grandparents or carers must get into a car to follow the bus down the road to the school. How does that fit in with the green agenda?

In October 2019, the then Minister announced a review of the school transport scheme to ensure funds are being spent in the most effective way to meet the objectives of the scheme. Terms of reference and everything else were agreed, but now because of Covid it has all been abandoned. The school transport scheme is a pure mess.

I know a man in Cloneen in Tipperary, Michael O'Brien, whose daughter Bianca is a recovering cancer patient and doing well, thank God. He has to drive her to school. He must make a choice between work and his child. Obviously, his child comes first so he has had to give up his job. This is shameful. The bus passes quite close but she cannot get a ticket on it. It is not acceptable that the review of the school transport scheme has been delayed because of Covid. With 3,100 students left to find alternative arrangements, the Government needs to sort this urgently. It is beyond urgent; it should have been sorted last year.

The future of the X8 Expressway service is in jeopardy and we cannot get a train out of Clonmel, Cahir or Carrick-on-Suir before 9 a.m. any morning. The bus service is very poor. I salute the private carriers and others, whom the Minister knows, who do the work there. We have 85,000 people waiting for driving tests. They are not allowed to drive and they cannot get on the system. The system is badly broken. I ask the Minister for Transport to try to fix it.

I commit to that.

In an ordinary year the Government would provide about €300 million in public service obligation supports to the public transport system. This year we will provide that, but we will also provide an additional €460 million because carriers have lost fare revenues owing to the Covid restrictions. If necessary, we will do the same again next year.

Bus Éireann has announced that it is seeking to withdraw from four of its intercity express services to consolidate the other 14 services and to provide additional bus services in Cork, Limerick, Galway, Meath and Louth. That was a decision by the company over how it wants to meet what it sees as growing demand and areas where it was suffering significant losses. It was not because of a lack of financial support or a lack of willingness to support public transport services. There will be an increased employment of drivers and a redeployment of drivers on existing routes. As I told the company - I commit to it here - if there is any loss of service with any town left out or left behind, we will apply the public service obligation to ensure no town is left behind.

This was the commercial side of its bus operations. It was not under the public service route network, but that does not matter. We still need to ensure every town is connected. Indeed, we seek to expand the public transport network. Under the towns first policy, we can use the strange opportunities Covid presents to change our transport system away from long-distance car commuting towards having local bus services. People who are able to work remotely without the need to commute will have good quality local bus services in their own town as well as between cities.

Obviously, Covid restrictions have presented considerable difficulty for school transport. With the recommencement of schools, the Government set up the school transport system to work effectively with student safety in mind. The Department of Education and Skills provided funding for all the proper sanitisation and hygiene requirements on buses. Because the numbers spiked about a week before the schools came back, we had to revise the plans further. We did not have the 1,600 drivers needed and the extra coaches to meet the higher standards that the health authorities required. The Minister for Education and Skills has been working on that. We will introduce it shortly. I estimate it will cost over €100 million to further protect and improve the school bus transport system.

Everyone in the House knows there are difficulties with that system. About 20,000 students get buses in a separate private system. There are issues with concession tickets, none of which are optimal. There is no lack of support, no lack of commitment and no lack of funding. Many hundreds of millions of euro of additional funding will be allocated to public transport this year and we will do the same again next year.

That is not very helpful. The school transport system is a mess. The Minister is talking about €750 million this year, €450 million more than last year. He would be better off subsidising parents to drive their kids to school and forget his green ideals. We have buses passing by and cars travelling in front of them and behind them and the whole thing is organised chaos. The Minister said the numbers spiked in September but the Government knew, since the schools closed last March, that this problem was coming down the track. Can the Government not think ahead? The Department managers would not survive in business for a week. The Minister should know as he is a former businessman. Surely one plans ahead when one sees what is coming down the track.

We have 85,000 people waiting for driver tests, we will have a carbon tax hitting us in the budget, we literally have no rail services in County Tipperary, although the Minister has made the right noises about how he wants to see stations restored, and we have no guarantee on the Expressway services. Thank God for PJ Kavanagh, McCarra's, Lambert's, Denny and Kit Whelan and Mr. Toohey up in Nenagh. Thank God also for the parents' groups who are able to organise private routes. They can do it efficiently with buses. Those bus owners have got no support whatsoever from the pandemic unemployment payment or anything else. They are getting no support to sanitise their buses either. It is discrimination against rural people all the time and rural children are being bullied. Can the Minister imagine the damage it does to a child when his or her two siblings are taken on and they cannot be taken on? Just think of it happening to a child of five, seven or eight years of age. The Minister should think about that for one minute.

I spoke earlier about confidence in our systems. We also need confidence in the return to schools. People should have that confidence because-----

The Government has lost €100 million.

What we have seen is our schools and the public transport system supporting them - Bus Éireann is the company that has been largely managing this and it has managed it well-----

It has not. It has managed it badly.

What we have heard from the health authorities is that any increase in incidences of the virus have not come as a result of the return to schools. We have actually managed it well, both within the schools and the public transport and other systems we have been using to get our children to and from school. It has actually worked. We have not seen a spike and an increase. However, at the last minute the health authorities came to us saying that because they were worried about rising numbers, as an extra precaution they wanted to see a further change in the arrangements. As I said, that will involve something like 1,600 additional coaches. Some of these will be from the very businesses the Deputy is aware of which are in real difficulty because they are not able to operate services in other areas of the economy. The Government was willing to take on the financial implications and the organisational arrangements even though we felt the system we had in place was a good one, because it had not led to an increased incidence of the virus.

The Minister has left children behind.

Thank you, we are over time.

We said that to be absolutely sure we would deliver those extra buses-----

The Minister is avoiding the most important part.

-----and we will deliver those extra buses.

The Minister never referred to the children who were left behind.

Thank you, Deputy McGrath. We are moving on to Questions on Promised Legislation. I ask Deputies to keep within their time so that as many can get in as possible.