Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 27 November 2014
173. Deputy Peadar Tóibín asked the Minister for Education and Skills when assessing a student for eligibility of a school bus ticket, if it is the shortest distance between the home and the school that is calculated when determining eligibility or if it is the total distance travelled by the bus, having picked up all students on that route, inevitably making the journey longer, that is measured. [45665/14]
View answer174. Deputy Peadar Tóibín asked the Minister for Education and Skills if she will provide details of the methodology applied to measure the distance from home to school to determine school bus eligibility. [45666/14]
View answer175. Deputy Peadar Tóibín asked the Minister for Education and Skills if she accepts that the nature and ethos of a school must be taken into account by her Department when deciding the school closest and therefore deemed by her Department to be most suitable for a student to attend in order to apply for school bus travel. [45667/14]
View answerI propose to take Questions Nos. 173 to 175, inclusive, together. The purpose of my Department's Post Primary School Transport Scheme is, having regard to available resources, to support the transport to and from school of children who reside remote from their nearest education centre. Children are eligible for transport where they reside not less than 4.8 kilometres from and are attending their nearest education centre as determined by the Department/Bus Éireann, having regard to ethos and language.
In relation to school transport provision, ethos relates to religious ethos and is in the context of provision for minority religions. Distance eligibility is determined by Bus Éireann by measuring the shortest traversable route from a child's home to the relevant education centre and a variety of methods may be used to calculate this measurement including a specially designed GIS mapping system. The shortest traversable route between a child's home and the relevant education centre may be either a pedestrian or vehicular route, and it is not necessarily the route that the school bus takes. In cases where distance eligibility is marginal or in dispute, vehicles fitted with calibrated measuring devices which measure the distance down to the nearest metre may be used to establish the exact distance and/or the nearest appropriate education centre to the child's home.
