I wish to share my time with Deputy Ring.
Adjournment Debate. - School Transport.
That is satisfactory and agreed.
Thank you for allowing me to raise this matter this evening. Without reflecting on the Minister of State, I regret that neither the Minister for Education nor her Minister of State are present to deal with this. This issue is of great concern to parents and students in the general locality of Glenamoy, Ballina, County Mayo, one of the most windswept areas in the country. It arises because of the desire of parents to have a choice in selecting a school for their children. Students also like to have a choice in the matter. Some students from that area attend the local college, a very fine all Irish college in Rossport. Others decide to attend the schools in Ballycastle or Lacken Cross 15 and 22 miles away, respectively. Others decide to attend Belmullet vocational school and Belmullet Convent.
The problem is an issue right around the country and cannot be sorted out without ministerial intervention. I am aware that the Department of Education would be loath to change this because it would create a precedent. Without going into detail, there are three families from the one village going in different directions. It is not possible to sort this out in the Chamber this evening so I am requesting the Minister, first, to meet with a delegation from the Glenamoy area to discuss this; second, to amend the transport scheme to allow for catchment boundary transport to the school of their choice for the families and to do that in the context of the existing schemes as an exceptional measure. Otherwise, nothing beneficial will result.
Some students are receiving day passes to travel to Lacken Cross and Ballycastle schools in the morning but have no transport home in the evening. The distances in questions are 15 and 22 miles respectively. If ministerial intervention is not resorted to, this problem will not be sorted out. I cite the precedent of what happened in the Kilcoole area where arrangements were eventually arrived at the incidence where, for the last 20 years and perfectly legitimately, transport has been provided from within 100 yards of Cornamona school to Ballinrobe community school. These cases are ones I dealt with myself a number of years ago as Minister of State. I know these matters can be sorted out and how that can be done. I therefore ask the Minister, through the Minister of State, to meet the delegation and allow for an amendment of the transport scheme to cater for existing students in one of the most barren and windswept areas of the country.
We are almost into the depths of winter and still there is no sign of an end to the intolerable Glenamoy, County Mayo, school bus dispute. Does anybody care about these unfortunate pupils and their worried parents?
The schools affected are Our Lady's Convent of Mercy, Belmullet, the Convent of Mercy secondary school, Ballycastle and Lacken Cross vocational school. Fifteen students, all from the Glenamoy area, have been severely inconvenienced by a change in Bus Éireann's pick-up arrangements. Only this evening I spoke to one harassed mother who told me her child leaves for school at 7.45 a.m. and arrives home at 6.15 p.m. The craziness of this is underlined by the fact that a local bus driver passes these children on the road every morning but has been instructed not to pick them up. It is not fair that these children should have to go to school soaking wet and study all day in drenched clothes. If it happened in Dublin or in the Minister's own constituency, there would be a terrible outcry.
This is a simple problem and it can be resolved. No precedent will be set. What these people are looking for is something they had for the last 20 years, an arrangement whereby they were picked up at the pick up point. This was changed only this year. I hope the Minister will tell me why that was done and why these 15 students and their parents are suffering. The children are suffering because they are not going to school and that is not in their interests. I hope the Minister will have good news for us tonight. If not, the parents of these pupils will have to go to Ballina to picket Bus Éireann and they will be here next week in a deputation.
Deputy Kenny has requested a meeting. I am disappointed that neither the senior Minister nor the junior Minister is in the House to answer this case and it is left to the Minister of State, Deputy Treacy, to do this very unpleasant job. It is wrong that they did not attend. I wrote and faxed on three different occasions requesting that both the senior Minister and the junior Minister meet with Deputies Kenny, Hughes and myself and the parents' representative. I did not succeed in getting the Minister's agreement to meet such a deputation.
These people are not asking for any more than a return to last year's arrangements. As Deputy Kenny said, the distances involved are 15 and 20 miles respectively. One father has to bring his children five and a half miles to the pick-up point. A return to the original arrangement would mean he would have to bring the children nearly three miles. I ask the Minister to be sympathetic to this case. Major things are happening all over the country. This is only a small problem in a small place in the west. I hope the Minister will give us good news tonight.
Ar an gcéad dul síos ba mhaith liom buíochas a ghabháil don bheirt Teachtaí ó Iarthar Mhaigheo an deis a thabhairt dom freagra thar cheann mo chomrádaithe, na hAirí eile, nach bhfuil in ann a bheith anseo linn. Tá an tAire Stáit Aylward thar lear ag obair ar son an Rialtais. Tá cruinniú tábhachtach eile ag an Aire Oideachais. Thug sí geallúint sé seachtaine ó shin go mbeadh sí ag an gcruinniú sin anocht ach níl sise in ann a bheith anseo ach oiread. Is dona liomsa an cás sin, ach sin an scéal.
The main policy aim of the school transport scheme is to facilitate equality of access to primary and post-primary education by providing transport to enable children who might otherwise have difficulty in doing so to attend school regularly. Because of cost implications, the most that can be provided is a basic service. There are no aspirations or claims to anything other than that.
The post-primary transport scheme is organised, in the first instance, by the transport liaison officer, who is the chief executive officer of the vocational education committee of the county, in co-operation with the school authorities and Bus Éireann. The Department does not make detailed arrangements. This is the responsibility of the transport liaison officers, in conjunction with Bus Éireann.
I should explain that, for the purposes of the post-primary education scheme, the country has been divided into catchment areas, each of which has its own post-primary education centre. In order to be eligible for transport, pupils must live at least three miles from the post-primary centre of the catchment area in which they are based.
Pupils who are eligible for transport to the appropriate schools in their catchment area, but who wish to attend a school outside it, may be allowed transport only from the catchment boundary of the school attended.
Catchment boundary transport may be allowed, provided that there is room, after all eligible children have been accommodated and that no extra cost is incurred, either by way of an additional or larger bus, or an extension of the route. In the organisation of school transport services, all routes are planned in such a way as to ensure that, as far as possible, every eligible pupil has a reasonable standard of service from the point of view of time-table and distance from the route, while, at the same time, ensuring that all vehicles are fully utilised in the most efficient manner.
In this case, the parents of the children in question chose, as is their prerogative, to send their children to school outside their catchment area. They qualify, therefore, for catchment boundary transport only, subject to the conditions I mentioned earlier.
Each year, during the school summer holidays, Bus Éireann is obliged to revise its routes and services to make provision for population trends, and in accordance with the Department's direction to provide a cost-effective school transport service.
I repeat that catchment boundary pupils, that is, pupils from outside the catchment boundary, may be carried after all fully eligible pupils have been accommodated, provided there is still room for them on the bus of an existing service and that no extra cost is incurred through carrying them.
After all normal reorganisation of services in County Mayo was completed this year, the position was that there was a shortage of seats for catchment boundary pupils. Seven of these were going in one direction to Belmullet and seven more in the opposite direction to schools in Ballycastle and Lacken Cross. None of these pupils lives in the catchment area of the school they attend and they are, therefore, entitled to catchment boundary transport only.
When, on 12 September, the final arrangements were being put in place in County Mayo, extra provision had to be made for fully eligible pupils in the Bangor Erris-Ballycroy area and there were ten seats left over. Seven of these were offered to the parents of the pupils going to Belmullet. The parents refused to accept the seats.
The seven pupils attending the Ballycastle and Lacken schools were offered seats on a national school bus in the morning, but these parents also refused this offer. In each case, they would have to travel a longer distance to a pick-up point than last year.
Claims have been made that the catchment areas for the three schools have been changed and catchment boundaries moved. This is not the case.
Pick-up points have had to be changed for two reasons. One is to suit the needs of the eligible pupils, who take precedence. I would like to draw the House's attention to the fact that children from three families in the one townland are attending three separate post-primary centres. Only one of them is going to the centre in her own catchment area, Rossport. Second, previous pick-up points — Aughoosse Cross and Shrahnaploya — were both inside Rossport catchment area. By picking up children at these points, the bus had been encroaching into that catchment area.
I come from a remote rural area and I fully understand the exigencies of the school transport system. I listened with great interest to what Deputies Kenny and Ring said — Deputy Hughes has also spoke about this matter — and I have the utmost sympathy with their problem. I understand that people are frustrated when their children are late home in the evening while a bus passes them and cannot take them home. We must utilise the vehicles and have flexibility while maintaining the integrity of the service. Based on what has been said tonight, I will recommend to my ministerial colleges that if at all possible they should meet a deputation and try to resolve the matter to everybody's satisfaction.
The Dáil adjourned at 9.25 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 20 October 1994.