An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business Dail Éireann — 2026-09-16 ============================================================ Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central At this time of the year, the school transport issue causes a significant degree of stress and so on. Notwithstanding that, we are transporting far more children now. There are about 180,000 students being transported. It was a key part of the original free school initiative of Donogh O'Malley. Transport was key to it in rural Ireland, in particular. There is continuing expansion and additional resources. However, there are significant challenges in terms of students attending schools that are not the nearest school and so on. I take the Deputy's point on the Local Link. We need to look at how we can integrate existing services into the school transport service. I will talk to the Minister about that. --- 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/2026-09-16/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:48+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-09-16