Deputy P. J. Lalor gave me notice of his intention to raise the subject matter of Question No. 19 which appeared on the Order Paper for the 25th February last.
Adjournment Debate: School Transport Service.
I want to thank you for giving me permission to raise this question at this time. It seems a rather extraordinary request from me in the light of the reply to my question. On the 25th February last I asked the Minister for Education:
Why his Department have refused to issue tickets to two children aged 5 and 6 years in County Laois who travel four miles to Portarlington school and who should qualify for tickets on the same basis as other families who live further from the school and have this facility.
To that question there was a satisfactory reply. The Minister stated that, having considered the inspector's report in the matter, he had decided to allow the children in question free transport to the national schools in Portarlington.
Unfortunately since last Monday morning not alone has that transport been withdrawn from those children but it has been withdrawn from a total of 23 children who up to now were carried by this bus service. I was contacted on that day by representatives of the parents of those children and told they were notified by CIE that the bus would not be calling to collect their children in future but would be travelling as far as the crossroads known as Cushina Hill Crossroads, two-and-a-half miles from Portarlington. Up to now this school bus travelled roughly four miles out to the Bord na Móna office. It appears to me that in an effort to realise some type of specific economy at this crucial stage a directive has been issued by the Department of Education to CIE to restrict this service. The outcome is that none of the 23 children who were up to now served by this bus service, was in school on Monday last. I do not know what the position is today but I have no reason to believe there has been any change.
This bus which travelled four miles to a Bord na Móna office and served 23 children has now been withdrawn. The effect of the success that appeared to have been achieved by my question of 25th February last and, as was indicated by the Minister in his reply, achieved by a question by my colleague, Deputy O. J. Flanagan on 23rd January and representations from my colleague, Deputy Connolly, has been nullified. We were all satisfied that the matter was satisfactorily resolved. The overall outcome of the issue of those two tickets is that the service has been withdrawn from 23 children, including the two children who got the service arising out of my question. All those children have tickets but they have been told that they must travel to Cushina Hill Crossroads. Some of them have to travel six miles and others have to travel shorter distances. All those families are at least one-and-a-half miles away from this crossroads. They include the Murray children, on whose behalf I was fighting previously. Then there are also the Bloomer, McHale, Bryan, Lawlor and Fitzgerald families.
I am pleased the Parliamentary Secretary is here to deal with this question and I hope he can give some sort of rational explanation. I am not looking for a rational explanation for the withdrawal of this service, I am trying, on behalf of the parents of the 23 children involved, to get a restoration of the service into this area. The two children, who were the subject of my question on 25th February, are not the furthest away from Portarlington school. They live four miles away from Portarlington and 3.78 miles from Walsh Island School, a rural school.
It is quite possible that the Department are trying to introduce a system in which all those children will be forced to go out of their own parish to the rural school at Walsh Island. Westward from the point where the bus used to come is the Monevane river which marks the boundary of the parish of Portarlington and that of Walsh Island. All the children in the parish of Portarlington have been going to Portarlington school. They may have been a fraction of a mile nearer to Walsh Island school but the families from this area have traditionally sent their children to Portarlington school.
There are new families in that area because this is part of the Bord na Móna development. All of those children have been going to Portarlington school for years. The parents of the children who have been settled in that area for a period have been going to Portarlington school. The majority of those children belong to families who have recently arrived in that area. They are all in the parish of Portarlington and are entitled to a school service. All those children have to travel roughly one-and-a-half miles to Cushina Hill Crossroads to meet the bus. They have to join in with the remainder of the 23 children.
I contacted the CIE district manager's office at Athlone, which is the office responsible in this area, and I was told last Monday that there was nothing they could do about it, that they were acting under instructions from the Department of Education. They were asked if there was an available spot to turn at Cushina Hill Crossroads. When they said that a bus could turn safely at that crossroads the CIE office were told the service was to be restricted to there. No pupil is picked up in the two-and-a-half mile trip from Portarlington to Cushina Hill Crossroads so all of the 23 children from this area have to walk to the crossroads to be collected.
I am protesting about this and I hope I will not get from the Parliamentary Secretary an explanation which says: "We have a transport service passing that area which goes to Walsh Island school and all those children must now go there." They would be going out of the parish and they would further tax what I understand is an already over-crowded school.
I was prompted to raise this matter on the 25th February by a letter from a parent published in the Evening Press on the 10th February. The parent had not been in contact with me before that. He wrote the letter because of his frustration with the school bus service. Apparently because of his success in getting tickets for his two children all the neighbouring children have now lost the service. This is what I am protesting about now. I was hoping to raise this question yesterday evening when Deputy Connolly could have joined me because he is more au fait with the situation in the area. He was frantic about this, too, having been approached by a number of parents. I do not think there is any need for me to put Mr. Murray's letter, which appeared in the Evening Press of 10th February, 1975, on the record. That was originally my intention if the question I tabled on 25th February had not been successful. The man criticised the Department of Education and the Minister for Education. There was an overall criticism of the bureaucratic system. I do not agree with that in this case. The Department of Education are possibly being forced into the curtailing of the school transport service because of the scarcity of cash. The Minister of Education came into this House on a number of occasions and said that the Exchequer had been drained dry, that there was no money available. Yesterday he got headlines for promising to spend an additional £8 million on secondary education.
I cannot see how it adds up to £8 million but many people seem to be extraordinarily pleased with the promise. National school pupils, particularly national school pupils living four miles from their school, who were provided with this service initially by the former Government, should not have the service withdrawn at this stage simply because of the scarcity of money. I can see no justification for ordering the bus to stop at Cushina Hill Crossroads. All I can do is to ask the Parliamentary Secretary to restore the service that was provided up to now and have the bus run to the Bord na Móna office. The bus itself comes from Portlaoise which is quite a distance from Portarlington and it would be extraordinary if its driver was ordered to stop 1.6 miles short of the point where it has stopped up to now consequently discommoding 23 young children.
The basic rule in relation to school transport is that transport is provided for a child to that child's nearest school. The reason for that rule is that if it were to be departed from on a general basis one could theoretically justify buses going all over the country, criss-crossing and meeting one another on the roads going in different directions. This would obviously cost a great deal.
There would also be the difficulty that smaller rural schools could become run down because if parents thought they could get a bus to come to their door to take their children out of the rural school district into a school in a big town it would, perhaps, encourage more and more parents to take this option. This would lead to the running down of small rural schools and a consequent loss of teaching posts in those rural schools as well as incurring considerable expenditure in having buses going longer journeys. This is the basic rationale for this rule that transport is provided only to the nearest school.
The position is that in this area of Walsh Island and Portarlington there has been traditionally a service which did not conform to this basic rule. How this came into being is a good question because it was at all times outside the rules as they obtain but come into being it did. It entailed what is really duplication in the very exact sense of the term—two buses passing along the same stretch of road going to different schools. The child in question had not got this service to Portarlington while others had it. When this child applied it was found that he was nearer to Walsh Island and apparently a full-scale investigation was put in train. In view of the fact that other children were getting this concession, albeit irregularly, it was felt that at least the child in question should get the same treatment. This, basically, is the situation.
I heard about Deputy Lalor raising this matter on the Adjournment only today and I have not had the opportunity of personally investigating this latest development to any great extent. I would ask the permission of the Chair for time to investigate this further and not to give a final pronouncement at the moment. I am sympathetic to any family who have come to expect a particular service, although they were never entitled to it and have arranged their lives around it. I can see that there are hardships involved in the withdrawal of that service. What you never had you never miss but what you have had you do miss. I appreciate the point that Deputy Lalor is making. I cannot anticipate definitely the outcome of my further investigations into the matter but I can tell the Deputy and the House that these investigations will now be instituted with the utmost speed.
I appreciate what the Parliamentary Secretary has said and the fact that he has been aware of the position for only a short while but the Parliamentary Secretary will be aware that my up-to-date information is back-dated to Monday last when the news broke and my understanding is that at that stage the children were not going to school—all 23. It is not a question of one family; it is a question of a number who have had this service from the time it was incorporated. I have no doubt that the Parliamentary Secretary will be receiving representations from all my colleagues.
I understand that some representations have been received from Deputy Flanagan.
I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to deal with the matter urgently because a week lost is a week too much as far as a child at national school level is concerned. I have known the Parliamentary Secretary to look at such cases objectively and I would ask him to consider this one favourably.
The Dáil adjourned at 5.20 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Tuesday, 13th May, 1975.