As the Taoiseach is aware, hundreds of children were turned down for discretionary tickets for school buses for this year alone and my own constituency of Wexford is no exception. For example, Mairéad has two children, Aoife and Michael, who have been travelling for the last five years to the same school. Aoife has had open heart surgery and lung surgery. Mairéad will have to work fewer hours in order to bring her children to school. Anna, who is a teacher, travels 30 km to work each day. It is not possible for her to collect and drop off her daughter to school each day. Her daughter has travelled for the last three years on the same bus. Then we have Ben, who had a brain tumour as a child and has mobility problems which he has surmounted and overcome. His position in a mainstream school is very important to Ben and his family but he has been refused a discretionary ticket. I ask the Taoiseach to look further into supplying additional school transport as there are many cases like this replicated across the country and in many parts of rural Wexford.

As the Deputy knows, the Minister waives all fees for the school transport scheme. This measure is saving families up to €650 a year. This very substantial cost-of-living measure should be acknowledged in any comment on this scheme. It was coupled with an increase in the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance and the extension of the school meals programme. Over 124,000 tickets have issued, an increase of 21,000 over last year, and it is higher again if we include special needs children. We have 21,000 more children on school buses this year, which is a 20% increase. There are issues as a result of that, particularly in terms of those who may have applied late with regard to tickets and so on, but we are doing everything we can. The Minister will be engaging with the education committee tomorrow in the House and working across government in terms of improving the situation for those who still have not got discretionary tickets. Because of the increase, some people lost out, which I acknowledge, but we are trying to resolve that.