Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2026-09-23 ============================================================ Michael Collins (II), Cork South-West I beg your indulgence, a Cheann Comhairle, for a few seconds to welcome all the councillors from Independent Ireland, from all over the country, that have come up to the Dáil today, especially Councillor Mark Casey, who is joining Independent Ireland. He is our 27th councillor. We welcome him. I want to talk about what is happening to families all over the country when it comes to the debacle that is school transport, because you could not make some of this up even if you tried. I will give the Minister a sample of the thousands of school bus ticket problems throughout Ireland. We have children who have held concessionary school bus tickets for the last number of years. Their paperwork describes them as priority concessionary applicants. This year, they have no seats on the bus, yet we are dealing with cases where people who have applied more recently for concessionary places have received tickets on the same buses. Will the Minister explain to me what "priority" means if a family that has held those seats for years suddenly loses them while fewer applicants are accommodated? We have students waiting for concessionary tickets yet we are informed that there are ten empty seats on the bus. These children have no proper way of getting to school while the bus is passing their door with empty seats. Then we have another young family who made the major decision recently to return home from Australia with their children. Their children are eligible for school transport, yet because of the timing of their application, they have been told their request will not be reviewed now. They may be accommodated in the 2027-28 school year, but even that is not guaranteed. What are they supposed to do? Is one parent to give up work? Is that how we welcome a young Irish family back to rural Ireland? Then there is communication with Bus Éireann. Parents become desperate and frustrated. They come to our offices because they cannot get an answer. The public representatives themselves are then left waiting far too long for responses. I also want transparency on the allocation of concessionary tickets where a lottery or random selection process is used. Who conducts this? Who oversees it? How is it recorded? How can parents be satisfied that the system is fair? The 2020 programme for Government committed to reviewing the school transport scheme to achieve better outcomes and reduce car journeys. The review was done. At the Fianna Fáil Ard-Fheis in 2024 the then Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, stated the Government was going to reduce the distance rule to 1 km for primary schools and 2 km for post-primary school so that more children could gain access. She also stated the Government was going to introduce a system whereby the nearest school rule would be removed to give greater choice and greater flexibility. Why has the Government not delivered? Why are children being left on the side of the road? Why are parents stressed out of their minds trying to get their kids to school? Parents are trying to get out to work in a cost-of-living crisis so why is the Government not delivering on the promises it made in 2024? Fianna Fáil went into the 2024 general election promising 100,000 additional students on school transport by 2030. Similar promises were made in the 2025 programme for Government. What is the Government waiting for? When will the Government implement the school transport review it has already committed to? Does the Government still stand over the commitment made by the then Minister, Deputy Foley, to reduce the distance criteria to 1 km for primary pupils and 2 km for post-primary pupils? Will the Government remove the nearest school rule? --- 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/2026-09-23/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:49+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-09-23