School transport is causing frustration and stress for many families across rural Ireland. I refer specifically to the eligibility criterion for nearest and second-nearest schools. This requirement fails to reflect family circumstances, school preferences and logistical realities on the ground. It is simply too rigid and does not reflect modern Irish society. To give an example, the Bus Éireann portal advised a mother that St. Gerald’s College in Castlebar was her son’s nearest school but failed to take into account that the boy did not even meet the criteria for St. Gerald’s because his primary school only feeds into Rice College and Sancta Maria College. At the Fianna Fáil Ard-Fheis last year, the then Minister for Education, Deputy Norma Foley, agreed with my point and said that, under the current scheme, students have to attend their nearest school to qualify for the transport scheme and that we are now going to introduce a system where we remove that criterion and give them greater choice and flexibility. When will this happen?

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. About 172,000 young people access the school transport scheme. Many of those are children with additional needs. The programme for Government sets out very clearly that we will expand the scheme even further. There is no set timeline, and the expansion has to be done across the lifetime of the current Government, but we have set a very clear target to ensure 100,000 more children will be able to access the scheme. In particular, that would mean removing the barrier that essentially forces young people to go to their nearest school or the school allocated to them. We want to remove the barrier to ensure children can attend, via the school transport scheme, the school they are attending already.