School Transport
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-23
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Michael Moynihan (FF), Cork North-West

The school transport system scheme, which Bus Éireann operates on behalf of the Department, has expanded significantly over the past six years. In that time, the number of children and young people using the service has grown from under 120,000 in 2018 to over 181,000, including over 24,000 pupils with special educational needs in 2025, which equates to an increase of over 50%. Since 2018, investment in the scheme has more than doubled from €200 million to €537 million in 2025. The growth in school transport has been especially marked in the area of special educational needs. This now represents almost 60% of the scheme’s total costs, while serving around 13% of pupils.
The School Transport 2030 report was published in early 2024. The recommended changes to the schemes include expansion of the current eligibility criteria, addressing current operational challenges and moving towards better integration with public transport to ensure the better value for money to the Exchequer. It was outlined at the time the review was published that the proposed changes to the eligibility criteria would further increase demand for the scheme so it was considered prudent to implement the changes on a phased basis.
As part of this phased rollout, 14 school transport pilots commenced in the 2024-25 school year. A further 11 pilots were approved for the 2025-26 school year. For these pilots, the distance criteria for pupils were reduced to 2 km for primary and post-primary and the need for a pupil to be attending their nearest school was removed. All pilots are being monitored, and a further evaluation will take place at the end of the current school year. Findings from these evaluations will guide the planning and implementation needed for a national rollout of a revised school transport scheme. Implementation of the recommendations of the review will continue to be planned subject to resources being available to meet the increased demand.

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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/dail/2026-04-23/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-23