School Transport
Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-18
============================================================

Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (FF), Carlow-Kilkenny

I do understand. This is a really important issue. In the current school year, over 181,000 children are transported daily to primary, post-primary and special schools throughout the country. Included in those figures are over 25,000 children travelling on the school transport scheme for children with special educational needs. This includes over 7,800 tickets in County Meath.
The Department recognises that the school transport scheme is vital to families in certain areas to support them in bringing their children to school. The safety, care and protection of school children travelling on school transport services is equally of paramount importance to the Department of Education and Youth and Bus Éireann.
I compliment Linda, the bus driver the Senator mentioned. It is great to see a woman bus driver there and, as the Senator said, she is so dedicated and committed to it. I wish her well.
I will definitely go back to the Minister with this. I thank the Senator.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-03-18/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:44+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-18