There are five secondary schools in Ennis, County Clare, and they are very pressurised. Over the years, many children applying to them were refused and had to try another school and then another. These days, a common application system is operational and works well. The problem is there are children in second, third and fourth year in other schools who could not get into a school in Ennis and it was not their first choice to go elsewhere. They tried to attend their local secondary school but the constraints of the system pushed them farther afield. Every day, in the small village of Doora, SUV after SUV and people carrier after people carrier, because they can take more people, head eastwards in our county to attend secondary school in Tulla. School transport policy, which has operated largely since the 1950s, needs an overhaul for children who have been unable to attend their local school not by choice but by design of the system over the years. Will the Taoiseach look at that and will the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, look at revising the school transport system?

The Deputy made a very fair point - and has made it consistently - in respect of the school transport scheme. As the Minister for Education has indicated, she is undertaking a review of school transport. In my view, going back to the issue of climate change, if we want to get people out of cars, it makes sense that we would broaden the remit of the school transport scheme to facilitate people in bringing children to school. When we brought in free second level education in the 1960s, school transport was the key enabler. We can see the benefits that brought to the nation.