I beg your indulgence, a Cheann Comhairle, for a few seconds to welcome all the councillors from Independent Ireland, from all over the country, that have come up to the Dáil today, especially Councillor Mark Casey, who is joining Independent Ireland. He is our 27th councillor. We welcome him.

I want to talk about what is happening to families all over the country when it comes to the debacle that is school transport, because you could not make some of this up even if you tried. I will give the Minister a sample of the thousands of school bus ticket problems throughout Ireland. We have children who have held concessionary school bus tickets for the last number of years. Their paperwork describes them as priority concessionary applicants. This year, they have no seats on the bus, yet we are dealing with cases where people who have applied more recently for concessionary places have received tickets on the same buses. Will the Minister explain to me what "priority" means if a family that has held those seats for years suddenly loses them while fewer applicants are accommodated? We have students waiting for concessionary tickets yet we are informed that there are ten empty seats on the bus. These children have no proper way of getting to school while the bus is passing their door with empty seats. Then we have another young family who made the major decision recently to return home from Australia with their children. Their children are eligible for school transport, yet because of the timing of their application, they have been told their request will not be reviewed now. They may be accommodated in the 2027-28 school year, but even that is not guaranteed.

What are they supposed to do? Is one parent to give up work? Is that how we welcome a young Irish family back to rural Ireland? Then there is communication with Bus Éireann. Parents become desperate and frustrated. They come to our offices because they cannot get an answer. The public representatives themselves are then left waiting far too long for responses. I also want transparency on the allocation of concessionary tickets where a lottery or random selection process is used. Who conducts this? Who oversees it? How is it recorded? How can parents be satisfied that the system is fair?

The 2020 programme for Government committed to reviewing the school transport scheme to achieve better outcomes and reduce car journeys. The review was done. At the Fianna Fáil Ard-Fheis in 2024 the then Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, stated the Government was going to reduce the distance rule to 1 km for primary schools and 2 km for post-primary school so that more children could gain access. She also stated the Government was going to introduce a system whereby the nearest school rule would be removed to give greater choice and greater flexibility. Why has the Government not delivered? Why are children being left on the side of the road? Why are parents stressed out of their minds trying to get their kids to school? Parents are trying to get out to work in a cost-of-living crisis so why is the Government not delivering on the promises it made in 2024?

Fianna Fáil went into the 2024 general election promising 100,000 additional students on school transport by 2030. Similar promises were made in the 2025 programme for Government. What is the Government waiting for? When will the Government implement the school transport review it has already committed to? Does the Government still stand over the commitment made by the then Minister, Deputy Foley, to reduce the distance criteria to 1 km for primary pupils and 2 km for post-primary pupils? Will the Government remove the nearest school rule?

I thank Deputy Collins. As he knows, the wider organisation and the operation of it is managed by Bus Éireann and the Department of Education and Youth sets the wider policy and the funding profile. To answer the question, if we stand back and look at the funding of the school transport scheme from 2019 or 2020 to this year, it has expanded significantly. We had 120,000 children using the service in 2019 and this number is now at over 180,000 pupils in 2026. This is a 50% growth in a very short number of years. This speaks to a Government that has prioritised this and is funding it at a greater level. The funding for school transport in 2019 was approximately €219 million and this will rise to more than €600 million this year. This is a scheme that is heavily subsidised, and rightly so, and supports many families throughout the country.

With this level of growth there are certain constraints in areas where the demand has risen. This is managed, as Deputy Collins knows, by Bus Éireann and the current terms of the scheme are continuing to apply for the 2026-2027 school year. This means children are eligible for transport at primary level where they reside not less than 3.2 km from and attend their nearest school and at post-primary level where they reside not less than 4.8 km and attend the nearest school.

As eligible children have to be facilitated in the first instance, the available of concessionary transport varies from year to year and cannot be guaranteed for the duration of the child's time at a particular school. Bus Éireann has always arranged for the service to be full based on the capacity of the vehicle and there can be instances where a given bus may have empty seats. As we know, some people do not always use their ticket for various reasons during a particular year. Bus Éireann can only reallocate tickets that have been handed back by a family.

We have the Estimates process upcoming. What we have had to do over the past 12 months in particular is to manage a level of demand that has increased significantly to absorb it with additional capacity. Every year we have to assess what the projected demand will be in the next school year and what the capacity constraints are in the system to deliver against this. This will be the same for this year. Obviously we want to see more children using school transport. This speaks to the level of funding, which we have increased in the last number of years. Any further changes to be considered as part of the Estimates process will come down to the extent to which the funding support can grow, the demands projected by the Department of education and Bus Éireann's capacity to put it into operation.

I thank the Minister. The school transport scheme has been reviewed and promises have been made yet children are still being left behind. This is the major issue we have. How can a child have no transport while a bus passes their door with ten empty seats? Why are priority concessionary pupils receiving no apparent priority? When will the nearest school restriction, and this is a very serious question on which the Government has promised but not delivered, be changed? Have the promised 100,000 additional places been delivered? The Minister has said that 60,000 or 70,000 have. When will extra buses be rolled out for children who need to go to school?

We also need a fair electronic system to detect non-use and to reallocate seats that are persistently unused to children who desperately need them. Basically it should be a case of use it or lose it. These are children trying to get to school. They are not numbers on a spreadsheet. If Bus Éireann and the Department cannot administer the scheme properly and make sensible use of empty seats, is it time to hand its administration to somebody who can?

The challenge is that if we were to follow through on Deputy Collins's suggestion and remove the system we have today, it would be far more challenging for many of the pupils and students who use it. It is a very complex system built up over many years, which has significant organisation to it across many parts of rural Ireland. If we were to follow through on what Deputy Collins suggested, we would have significant disruption to service capacity right across the country and we need to be cognisant of that.

What we will seek to do in the budget is, obviously, to assess the wider demand projection for 2027-28. Also, we know there is increased demand, particularly at second level, which has to be accommodated and obviously different distances are required there. We will assess that. What we are saying is that we will have to assess the demand profile and what the consequences are in terms of what is required in direct Exchequer funding. That is our wider assessment around how we would phase any changes to the existing criteria, to answer Deputy Collins's question. We will continue to keep this under review as we assess the wider dynamics of school transport.