For quite some time up to Monday of last week the corridors have been seething with rumours as to what precisely the Minister for Educa-tion was proposing to do in relation to the free transport scheme for primary and post-primary education. The recurrent rumour was that the Minister was about to charge for the service, but time and time again the Minister or his Minister of State came into the House and denied that any charge would be made for this service.
We on these benches accepted this in good faith. I do not think anybody realised what was about to happen. However, on Monday 12 May, three days after the conclusion of the debate on the Estimate for the Department of Education, during which the Minister, by right, should have announced this, his Department issued a statement in relation to school transport of which a copy was sent to me and to the newspapers. This is the first occasion on which the Dáil has had an opportunity to discuss this serious measure, and as I sought permission to raise on the Adjournment the reasons for the changes being made, it is only fair that I should put into the records of the House some of the changes involved and comment on their implications, because it is only by looking at the changes and their implications that we are enabled in any degree to assess them.
The Department of Education circular identifies a number of significant differences for transport to primary schools. In paragraph (a), it mentions the number of eligible children necessary for the establishment of a school transport service. The number is being increased from ten to 12. This means that small townlands, parishes and other small centres in rural areas where there are groups of children of ten or 11 in total will not be given access to free transport to primary schools next year whereas they would have such access this year. By any standard this must be regarded as a worsening of the service.
We have no idea about the number of children who will be affected by this step, and the Minister, to judge from a reply he gave to me yesterday, has no idea either, but I can tell the Minister and the House, and particularly the Minister's backbenchers who will have to go around explaining this away next September, that by next September we will not be under any illusion about the number of children who might have been expected to avail of the service if it were available on the terms available this year.
Under (b) the circular states that a child of more than nine years of age must live at least three miles from the nearest national school in order to be eligible for free transport. The age limit has been ten years up to now. The effect of this is not clear, to put it mildly. I can only assume that it is disadvantageous to children between the ages of nine and ten. Under (c) the Minister's circular states that children between four and five years of age may not be taken into account for the purpose of establishing a service. Prior to this they could have been included in the number required to set up a school transport service. I am asking the Minister a specific question: does this mean that in relation to existing services where children of between four and five years were being carried and were counted in the original total, this service will be discontinued as and from next year unless the other criteria are met, or does it mean that this will be continued? Even if it is continued it puts at a disadvantage all areas in which children of four and five years are needed to bring the new total up to 12 rather than ten children. We have no clear idea of how many townlands and villages are being excised by the Minister's scalpel, but I have no doubt we will be told by the end of the year.
Under paragraph (d) the Minister notes that new services that may be introduced as from 1 January 1981 will be based on the criteria for such services being established in the first term of the school year 1980-81. In relation to post-primary education, the free transport scheme is being altered so that the establishment of a school transport service must require 15 children eligible for the service before the school buses are allowed to run. In order to avail of the service a child must live four miles from the school, and if one wants to be pedantic about it this is an extension of 33? per cent from the present limit of three miles. There are certain other provisions in relation to the fares for children who are accommodated as concessionary fare-paying passengers.
The only conclusion we can draw from the facts at our disposal is that the changes in the scheme will disadvantage younger children and those who live at a distance from a school where formerly they were entitled to free post-primary transport. I had a question to the Minister yesterday in the Dáil—Question No. 227—and he told me that the school transport regulations to apply in the school year 1980-81 were considered and adopted for the purpose of providing a service suited to the requirements of present circumstances. He said the motivation was not a saving in financial expenditure through not making the ser-vice available to a particular number of pupils. That answer is enough to make a cat laugh. I cannot see anybody looking at the changes in the scheme and coming to such a conclusion. If the motivation was not a saving in financial expenditure, what was it? Was it spite? The Minister could hardly agree to that. Perhaps it was the salvation of the Irish footwear industry as a major beneficiary of the changes being announced by the Minister? If the motivation is none of these things, what is it?
I would direct the attention of the Minister to the fact that the revision of the scheme that he has announced bears no relation to the financial and economic circumstances of the pupils and the parents who may be disadvantaged by the changes. Some of the children involved in the scheme may be the children of social welfare recipients. There are 100,000 in this country who live in families that have social assistance as their only form of income. Are these children going to be denied the right to free education or even compulsory education at the primary school level because their parents cannot dip into their social welfare money to get them to school?
During the debate on the Estimate for the Department of Education we made some play of the fact that the allocation for primary school transport was cut by more than £3 million. When they were making that criticism I do not think anybody realised the extraordinary cavalier nature of the proposals the Minister was about to bring us in this sneaky way, just after the debate on the Estimate for his Department and without affording the House a proper opportunity to comment on them.
I appeal to the Minister to reconsider the matter. I urge him in the interests of social justice and equity to think again about what he is doing. I can tell him that if he does not heed the appeals from this side of the House at this time the appeals from the benches behind him will become more clamorous as the year goes on.
