The Labour Party and I want to raise with the Minister the compounding crisis year on year for school transport. It is impacting every constituency. I represent a largely urban constituency, yet I am dealing with ten families in Swords who are unable to get school transport up to Coláiste Ghlór na Mara in Balbriggan. This is happening every single year; kids are being left at the side of the road. My party colleague Deputy Wall is dealing with over 100 families across four routes in Kildare South and Deputy Eoghan Kenny, who is sitting behind me, is also dealing with over 100 families in his area of Cork. Leitrim County Council, Cavan County Council, Galway council and the Minister's own county council in Meath - everywhere - are saying school transport is not working and kids are being left at the side of the road. Can we have a solution, not only for this year but a proper plan for school transport so that we are not back here next year with more kids being left at the side of the road?

Hear, hear.

We do have a plan. Every year, more and more children are getting access to school transport. I appreciate not everybody is getting access and there is more work we need to do. I think the figure was 181,000 young people who had access to school transport this year. We have to acknowledge we only have so many buses and drivers, but we also need to make sure we have a system that works effectively.

One of the most important things we will work on in the time ahead is a new ticketing system. We know there are buses where not all of the tickets are being used. There are people who are taking up tickets and then not using the bus. We need to make sure that if that is the case, the seats can then be provided to somebody else who needs the bus more. We can only do that if we have an automatic ticketed system whereby people can monitor who is getting on the bus and who is not. That will be one of the most important things we do in addressing some of the issues and challenges. That work is under way and is happening through the Department.

I appreciate it is a challenging issue. We all deal with it in our constituencies, but importantly, it is extremely stressful for parents. Again, I stress that more money is being spent - significant amounts, hundreds of millions - every year on school transport. More children are accessing it, but we need to make sure we have the buses, the drivers and the appropriate system in place to monitor who is on it.