I wish to bring to attention this morning the requirement that is put upon school bus drivers to cease their work or retire at the age of 70, despite whatever ability they may have to continue to do the job perfectly well. In fact, the same school bus drivers who are forced to stop driving the school buses once they reach their 70th birthday are, in many cases, deemed perfectly fine to drive the same schoolkids from the school to a hurling or camogie match during the school day and bring them back to school but, then, they are not deemed eligible to drive the school bus to bring them home that evening.

That is a crazy situation in which we find ourselves, especially given that many of the companies that operate these school bus services find getting drivers to be the biggest challenge they have in providing the service. This is something we need to look at as a matter of urgency. The operators of these school bus services are facing a major challenge. We are preventing a lot of people who would love to be working morning and evening from doing so. It suits a lot of people to do that morning and evening school run and have their day free in between, but we are preventing them from doing so just because they have hit the 70-year milestone. I hope we can look at an annual medical test that would be signed off on by the GPs of drivers who have reached their 70th birthday to allow them to continue. It could be revisited on an annual basis thereafter. Go raibh maith agaibh.