Over and over in this Chamber, many of the Senators bring up the safe routes to school programme. It is brought up a lot because we all recognise in our communities that we really want to get kids to school safely. Over the past few weeks, I have visited Killyon National School, Dunderry National School, Cannistown National School, Kilmessan National School, Kiltale National School and Kildalkey National School. They all have the same issue. The school authorities are asking how they get the kids more safely to school. There are more trucks and cars on the roads, and many of these schools were built many years ago when there were not nearly as many vehicles. There are narrow roads with no footpaths.

Just yesterday morning, I was out with the road safety officer from Meath County Council who did an amazing job in Dunderry National School talking about road safety. In that brilliant presentation, she was encouraging kids to cycle and walk to school. In my head, I was thinking that they will be dead outside if they do that because there is not even a footpath near where the bridge is there. We had a really good discussion with the road safety officer, however, and the council will put in interim traffic calming measures identifying that there is a school nearby, such as the pencils we see instead of bollards outside schools. They are going to put some red boxes and yellow markings near where the ramps are to let motorists know they are coming close to a school.

I had a little bit of a lightbulb moment. If we are not going to maintain the safe routes to school programme because of maybe financial pressure in the Department of Transport, would the Minister, Deputy O’Brien, consider maybe preliminary funding for every rural school in the country so they can act and so the councils can actually provide interim supports for the school to let kids go safely? I am definitely going to try to meet him to discuss this. If the Department cannot afford to do the safe routes to school programme for every school in the country, could it provide bollard pencils, red boxes, yellow zig-zag lines, maybe the emoji camera with the with the happy face and sad face and the yellow diamond-shaped sign that lets people know they are approaching a school? Those measures do not cost the hundreds of thousands of euro that the safe routes to school programme costs. It might be a good way of doing something because it is better than doing nothing. I ask the Acting Leader to let the Minister know that all the Senators have mentioned it here in the Seanad over and over again. The Minister is doing a great job in the Department of Transport. The Acting Leader might let him know that I would like to meet him and go through that. I think everybody across the Chamber would like to see more safety outside our rural schools.