I have five imperatives — scrap the ill-advised scheme; take the summer to devise a new scheme, thus taking the pressure off examinees; provide free transport in the new schemes for the physically handicapped; remove the catchment boundary anomaly and do not have working men paying £150 per annum for school transport on top of increased PRSI and income taxation this year.
Private Members' Business. - School Transport: Motion (Resumed).
The following motion was moved by Deputy O'Rourke on Tuesday, 17 May 1983:
That Dáil Éireann condemns the Government for the present chaos and confusion in the school transport scheme and for inflicting hardship on many thousands of families.
Debate resumed on amendment No. 1.
To delete all words after "Dáil Éireann" and substitute the following:—
"approves of the arrangements made by the Government in connection with the imposition of school transport charges to alleviate any hardship which might be caused to families by such charges."
—(Minister for Education.)
Kipling once said that "If you could fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run" and, in fairness to Deputy Wilson, he has at last made some proposals in relation to this matter which has been discussed at length in this House over the last number of years. I wish also to congratulate Deputy O'Rourke on her appointment and I hope she will remain on that side of the House for many years. I am disappointed that her colleagues, apart from Deputy Wilson, have not made a decent, constructive statement during this debate. They have left it to Deputy Wilson to say anything constructive.
Being from a rural constituency, I know the school transport system has been riddled with anomalies since its introduction in 1968. I never availed of it myself, I had my trusty bicycle to carry me to my second level school, for which I paid each term, and I was glad to avail of that facility. There are at least five categories of pupils travelling on the yellow buses at present: medical card holders, junior cycle pupils who pay £14, senior cycle pupils at £24, the catchment boundary pupils at £24 and pupils who are technically deemed to be ineligible for transport but, because they live within a specific distance of the school and because there is transport available and space on it, are entitled to travel on paying a certain fee.
The Fianna Fáil Party have disappointed me because they have hidden behind the words of Deputy Brady, when he was Minister for Education for a short time, in refusing to put forward any constructive suggestions and have failed to recognise what this Government have done. We have faced up to the reality of the situation and have dealt with it as humanely as possible. We brought about a reduction in the charge levied by Fianna Fáil of £5.4 million to £4.4 million. I have listened with some sadness to suggestions that have been made that Members of this House, in various parts of the country, advised pupils to take steps that are not in accordance with normal behaviour of secondary school pupils. I do not think that is good for their training and it does not give them a sense of appreciation of what is involved in all this. It ill behoves any Member to carry on in that manner.
(Interruptions.)
Deputy Kenny, without interruptions, please.
I agree with Deputy Wilson when he says that this matter should be looked at over the summer period. However, I should like the media to take note that parents should apply for the continuation of school transport prior to 16 June whether or not they have medical cards or whether they are eligible for transport under the payments scheme at present. If parents do not apply, many routes will be deemed ineligible for transport as operated at present and that should be borne in mind by all parents. It should also be borne in mind by the Department that if there is any element of hardship created in relation to payments perhaps the fees could be paid over two or three periods.
It costs £33 million to carry 160,000 odd pupils to school, an average of approximately £200 per pupil. I know in many cases that if the parents were given £200 in respect of each school going child, they would transport them to school or provide bicycles and allow them to cycle if the distance is reasonable. It is no great hardship on any young person to cycle three or four miles and I know many pupils who cycle much further than that after school.
Sympathetic consideration should be given to physically handicapped children and I am sure the Department will do that. I have heard allegations of misuse and abuse of school buses and lack of appreciation by the students for something which, up to now, they have got for nothing. In fairness to CIE, they have been flooded with work over the last number of years, especially in relation to the school transport system. During the summer period it would be fair for the Department to contact the Private Bus Owners' Association to see if it would be feasible to adopt a pilot scheme in some catchment boundary area and to see if it could be operated at a more reasonable and practical cost.
The question of paying the grants on a capitation basis to the various principals of second level schools could also be looked at. In many cases the community supplement the Department by holding various functions, outings and so on for the assistance of schools in general. The high degree of community spirit is evident throughout the country and is proved by the fact that over £1 million was paid in a very short time in respect of school transport. In spite of what the Opposition Members say, people realise that they must contribute something towards a scheme which has got out of hand financially.
When this scheme was introduced, the price of diesel was very low. Houses were built without chimneys because the Government assumed that oil would remain cheap. From all the diesel evaporated from the other side of the House, Deputy O'Rourke has emerged with her answer to the school transport scheme. I want her to state loudly and clearly what Fianna Fáil think should be done because their Minister for Education said he intended to introduce a charge for school transport. It is imperative that we keep the school transport system in operation. Of course there are anomalies but it should be looked at in terms of community development, community assistance, a practicality of private owners taking on pilot schemes and the tightening up of the various administrative matters within CIE. It is imperative that the routes be maintained and that the parents of pupils eligible for transport should apply before 16 June of this year.
I welcome Deputy Kenny's contribution to the Fianna Fáil motion. He is the first Fine Gael Deputy to say in public many of the things we have said. It is quite obvious that he comes from a rural constituency. He has the strength and conviction to state openly and publicly what many Fine Gael and Labour Deputies are saying at parents' meetings. They are saying: "How can I defend the indefensible?" I heard that remark myself made by Deputies. Yet they will troop like sheep or lambs through the division lobbies and vote approval for the present school transport cuts.
Last week the Minister said that the only confusion which existed was in the minds of the Opposition. Within one hour I stood on a platform with the Minister in Wicklow. We had a capacity gathering of concerned parents from schools in County Wicklow. The Minister and I and other speakers put our points of view. Person after person asked what would they do about school transport. One group said they paid their money and did not get their tickets. Another group said they were discriminated against by the catchment boundary facility fees. Another group had another story. Practically the whole time given to questions and answers was taken up on the subject of the transport confusion which exists in County Wicklow.
The following day I received several phone calls here in the House from groups of parents who said they had paid for school transport and were told they would have to travel 30 miles to pick up their tickets. I gave their names to an official of the Department. Many of these people have not got transport to take them that number of miles. The evening before the Minister and the Minister of State said there was no confusion and no chaos, that everything was operable and the buses were full of happy and smiling children.
It was the political fellow from Blackrock who wrote that. He would not have a clue.
At first I thought it was not deliberate policy, but I now believe that what we are witnessing is a deliberate anti-rural bias in the educational policies of the Government. Deputy Kenny quoted Kipling. The words were appropriate in the circumstances. I want to quote the words of a poet from my constituency. Oliver Goldsmith from Pallas in the Longford-Westmeath constituency said:
Ill fares the land, to hast'ning ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.
If the Minister continues to adopt the Pale mentality which she has adopted so far in her educational policy, we will be left with a depopulated countryside, and there will be a rundown in the educational facilities available to rural children.
I want to go back to the catchment boundary facility. In an article by Christina Murphy, the esteemed education correspondent of The Irish Times, Deputy Doyle, the Fine Gael TD for Wexford, said that everybody should pay up or else. She also supported the introduction of some concession for catchment boundary pupils. She said:
I accept that they have opted to travel outside their catchment area to another school and as such are not in the same position as pupils attending schools within their catchment area.
The cracks are beginning to appear. Deputy Doyle has become aware of the realities of which Fianna Fáil Deputies were already aware. Rural Deputies are beginning to assert what they know is the actual position on the ground.
The Minister said blandly: Let them change schools if they cannot afford to pay their catchment boundary fees. The tripe and rubbish in the speech prepared for the Minister last week were unbelievable. I am surprised that she uttered it. In many instances pupils are attending a school because the school which would have been deemed to have been within their catchment boundary did not have a post-inter cert cycle, or did not teach the subjects which the pupil wished to learn.
I want to put a case to the Minister clearly. There is an area in my constituency in which children are attending a secondary school five miles from where they live. A bus passes their door and picks them up. They are the children of a medical card holder. They were told they should be attending a school eight miles away. They would have to cycle three miles to pick up the bus. That cannot be a correct system. Every rural Deputy knows that it cannot be right that a child should have to cycle three miles to catch a bus to a school eight miles away when a bus is passing the door to a secondary school five miles away.
Daft.
We are still awaiting the Deputy's proposals.
We should not have any interruptions from either side of the House.
The scales dropped from Deputy Kenny's eyes on the road to Damascus or the road from Mayo. He saw the children on the side of the road and he decided to speak in favour of our motion. It would be marvellous if he would vote for it. As I said before the by-election, there is confusion from Malin Head to Mizen Head. When I was canvassing in Donegal I was located in the Finn Valley and Ballybofey. Numerous deputations brought to my attention the enormous confusion which exists in the Finn Valley, in Glenties, in Pettigo, in West Donegal and in various areas.
This confusion is caused by the policies the Government are implementing. Last week the Minister said there was no confusion but that proves without doubt that there is confusion. We read in the papers and hear on the radio every day about school transport problems. The Minister is being fed information. I do not know who is feeding it to her.
I do.
They must be living in little boxes and pretending things do not exist. Unnamed people are saying: "It is all right. The buses are running. Everybody is very happy with the transport system". Nobody is happy with transport system.
The Dunsink Observatory.
We did not hear a proposal yet.
Order please. Deputy Wilson is being mischievous.
Watch Deputy Manning.
Deputy Manning is not much concerned about rural school transport.
I am concerned about all pupils.
I have very constructive proposals to put to the grinning Deputies on the other side of the House. I have had them since day one of my appointment to this spokesmanship. I knew this would be a live hot issue. The first such suggestion is that the Minister should scrap the scheme until the end of the current second level school year which will end for most pupils in the first week in June and for those taking the intermediate, group and leaving certificates some time between the middle and end of June. Examination pupils particularly are facing untoward stress and anxiety. I say this in all seriousness to the Minister. I have seen and spoken to them myself and I have spoken to their parents. There are many genuine cases of hardship, people who cannot pay the second level school transport fees, with pupils facing into an examination situation. For that reason alone and to alleviate that misery, I say to the Minister: please, leave it for the end of this school year.
My second proposal is that when the summer holidays begin the Minister should sit down immediately with interested bodies, with her officials, as Deputy Kenny has suggested, and I am very glad to echo his advice and take his words which were: "Look at the scheme during the summer". That is exactly what I said. I am on record as saying on last Tuesday night in this House: Yes, look at the scheme during the summer holidays.
I got in before the Deputy, though.
And the little mole in the Department of Education who listens every time I go on "Women Today" and busily writes down everything I say will have noted I said that on "Women Today" two weeks ago. I said: let the Minister sit down when the school year is over — that is my second constructive point — and let her work out a scheme which will be effective, which will be equitable and will apply a waiver scheme. In all essential services in this country there is what is known as a waiver scheme in operation. All of us who are members of county councils know that quite well. There is no waiver clause in this scheme.
(Interruptions.)
It is very much to be welcomed that I have such a dedicated team opposite who are prepared to contribute to this issue. Indeed, I thank them for their enthusiasm and goodwill——
Order, please.
My third suggestion to the Minister is also one that should be taken up——
The people opposite asked for proposals; they should listen to them.
My third suggestion is that there be an area selected for a pilot scheme of some other means of school transport than the one being used at present. If this were done, if all the interested bodies in that area — and by that I mean the transport liaison officers, the parents groupings, the school management boards, departmental officials, the Minister and Minister of State with their input — put their minds to that, I am sure there could be a scheme devised and thought out which, if when tried out in one area was found to be successful, could be extended to a larger area and could prove to be most beneficial.
Those are my three constructive suggestions. I have not access to the numerous advisory bodies or statistics that the Minister has. Yet I put down questions today — Nos. 797 to 802 and Nos. 804 and 805 — and the last sentence of the Minister's reply read:
Accordingly, my Department has not available to it the statistical information requested in the questions from the Deputy.
In eight counties I requested the number of pupils debarred from availing of the second-level school transport scheme, whose parents had medical cards, because of the catchment boundary clause. Lo and behold, I could not be told. This is a very grave breach of Dáil procedure in that precise questions which I, as an Opposition Deputy and spokesperson, put down could not be answered.
Deputy O'Rourke has a minute left.
I say to the Minister in the minute remaining to me that CIE are fed up trying to implement the order from the Department of Education. There is no good in the Minister blaming CIE, CIE blaming the Minister, Opposition Deputies blaming the Minister, which they are doing night after night at parents and club meetings all around the countryside. I say to the Minister that she should think of the rest of Ireland, forget about Dublin, about the cities, think of the whole of the country of Ireland, think of the children who in years to come will not have forgotten that the Minister took away from them something they had been given — the right to school transport. It ill behoves the "Just Society" of Fine Gael, the party who set themselves out——
(Interruptions.)
No heckling, please —— the party who set themselves out to bring into this country the just society. It ill behoves the Government Chief Whip to come strolling into this House and presume to tell me what to say or do.
He never opened his mouth.
I am sorry, I thought he did.
(Interruptions.)
All right, a little fellow at the back. I say to the Minister: forget the school transport scheme, draw up a scheme during the summer and we will look at it constructively. The Minister should just forget about the school transport scheme for second-level pupils. It is not operable, it will never become operable and the whole of the country is alarmed about it.
Amendment put.
The Dáil divided: Tá, 77; Níl, 68.
Tá
- Allen, Bernard.
- Barnes, Monica.
- Barrett, Seán.
- Barry, Myra.
- Bermingham, Joe.
- Birmingham, George Martin.
- Boland, John.
- Bruton, John.
- Bruton, Richard.
- Burke, Liam.
- Carey, Donal.
- Collins, Edward.
- Conlon, John F.
- Connaughton, Paul.
- Coogan, Fintan.
- Cooney, Patrick Mark.
- Cosgrave, Liam T.
- Cosgrave, Michael Joe.
- Coveney, Hugh.
- Creed, Donal.
- Crotty, Kieran.
- Crowley, Frank.
- D'Arcy, Michael.
- Deasy, Martin Austin.
- Desmond, Barry.
- Desmond, Eileen.
- Donnellan, John.
- Dowling, Dick.
- Doyle, Avril.
- Doyle, Joe.
- Dukes, Alan.
- Durkan, Bernard J.
- Enright, Thomas W.
- Farrelly, John V.
- Fennell, Nuala.
- FitzGerald, Garret.
- Flaherty, Mary.
- Flanagan, Oliver J.
- Griffin, Brendan.
- Harte, Patrick D.
- Hegarty, Paddy.
- Hussey, Gemma.
- Kavanagh, Liam.
- Kenny, Enda.
- L'Estrange, Gerry.
- McCartin, Joe.
- McGahon, Brendan.
- McGinley, Dinny.
- McLoughlin, Frank.
- Manning, Maurice.
- Mitchell, Gay.
- Mitchell, Jim.
- Molony, David.
- Moynihan, Michael.
- Naughten, Liam.
- Nealon, Ted.
- Noonan, Michael.
- (Limerick East).
- O'Brien, Fergus.
- O'Brien, Willie.
- O'Donnell, Tom.
- O'Keeffe, Jim.
- O'Sullivan, Toddy.
- O'Toole, Paddy.
- Owen, Nora.
- Pattison, Séamus.
- Prendergast, Frank.
- Quinn, Ruairí.
- Ryan, John.
- Shatter, Alan.
- Sheehan, Patrick Joseph.
- Skelly, Liam.
- Spring, Dick.
- Taylor, Mervyn.
- Taylor-Quinn, Madeline.
- Timmins, Godfrey.
- Treacy, Seán.
- Yates, Ivan.
Níl
- Ahern, Bertie.
- Ahern, Michael.
- Andrews, Niall.
- Aylward, Liam.
- Barrett, Michael.
- Barrett, Sylvester.
- Blaney, Neil Terence.
- Brady, Gerard.
- Brady, Vincent.
- Brennan, Mattie.
- Brennan, Paudge.
- Brennan, Séamus.
- Browne, John.
- Burke, Raphael P.
- Byrne, Hugh.
- Byrne, Seán.
- Calleary, Seán.
- Colley, George.
- Collins, Gerard.
- Conaghan, Hugh.
- Connolly, Ger.
- Coughlan, Cathal Seán.
- Cowen, Bernard.
- Mac Giolla, Tomás.
- MacSharry, Ray.
- Molloy, Robert.
- Morley, P.J.
- Moynihan, Donal.
- Nolan, M.J.
- Noonan, Michael J.
- (Limerick West)
- O'Dea, William.
- O'Hanlon, Rory.
- O'Keeffe, Edmond.
- O'Kennedy, Michael.
- Daly, Brendan.
- De Rossa, Proinsias.
- Doherty, Seán.
- Fahey, Francis.
- Fahey, Jackie.
- Faulkner, Pádraig.
- Fitzgerald, Gene.
- Fitzgerald, Liam Joseph.
- Fitzsimons, Jim.
- Flynn, Pádraig.
- Gallagher, Denis.
- Gallagher, Pat Cope.
- Geoghegan-Quinn, Máire.
- Harney, Mary.
- Haughey, Charles J.
- Hilliard, Colm.
- Hyland, Liam.
- Kirk, Séamus.
- Kitt, Michael.
- Lenihan, Brian.
- Leyden, Terry.
- McCarthy, Seán.
- MacEllistrim, Tom.
- O'Malley, Desmond J.
- Ormonde, Donal.
- O'Rourke, Mary.
- Power, Paddy.
- Treacy, Noel.
- Tunney, Jim.
- Walsh, Joe.
- Walsh, Seán.
- Wilson, John P.
- Woods, Michael.
- Wyse, Pearse.
Tellers: Tá, Deputies Barrett(Dún Laoghaire) and Taylor; Níl, Deputies B. Ahern and V. Brady.
Amendment declared carried.
Motion, as amended, agreed to.