During July and August, we can get from one side to the other of any town or city in Ireland without any great traffic congestion. This is the case in counties Cork and Clare and any place we can think of. This is largely due to schools being closed and the 200 or 300 cars doing the school drop-off not being on the road each morning. We have had an overhaul of school transportation but there are still many archaic rules, largely relating to distance from the nearest school, which prohibit and deny many people the opportunity to take bus transport to the local school. I ask the Taoiseach not to overhaul it but to tear it apart and start again using Covid as a zero starting point. Parents from Quin, Tulla, Sixmilebridge and all over the county have been on to me. Their children have been accepted in schools for September 2022 and they are already fraught with worry not knowing whether there will be a school bus service. We could hugely alleviate traffic problems. Not every town or city needs a motorway but a school bus taking 20 or 30 cars off the road would make a massive difference to many villages.

I have raised this issue myself with the Minister for Education and others. It is an easy issue to raise but it will be more challenging to fulfil. I would not start from Covid; I would start from climate change. With regard to tearing up the rule book, the way we should approach school transport into the future is through the prism of climate change. The Deputy is correct that if we want people out of cars and less frequent car trips, providing more buses and getting children to school on them would make a contribution to the environment. We could also get rid of a lot of the anomalies and endless arguments about catchment areas. This is easier said than done. A review is under way. I would like it to be informed by the climate change agenda in particular. It is absolutely applicable to that.