The cost of school bus travel is to rise for all pupils except the children of medical-card holders, who will continue to travel free.
The Minister of State for Education, Mr Willie O'Dea, has said that any move to withdraw Bus Eireann's contract to run the school transport system could result in its collapse, and he warned that private cartels could hold the Government to ransom.
The School Transport Review Committee, which reported to the Government in January, recommended that medical-card holders should pay an annual contribution of £30 per child. It also recommended that charges for all other students, apart from those with special needs, be increased to £90 per year. Now it had been decided that medical-card holders should not be subjected to a charge, Mr O'Dea said.
However, he thought it might be possible to anticipate an increase in charges to improve the system. The increase had yet to be determined and the charges could be means tested, he said.
The review committee, which was chaired by Prof John Bristow, of Trinity College, also recommended increases in the resources allocated to children with special needs and upgrading the transport services allotted to them. Special-needs children have a statutory right to school transport, which means that they have first call on the transport spend.
The number of children availing of the service varied from year to year, which made it impossible to predict the amount of money available to the regular service. "We are considering dividing the budget and giving special-needs children their own transport budget," Mr O'Dea said. "Unless we do this it will be difficult to maintain a good service for everybody else."
Over the years there have been many calls for the privatisation of the school transport service, which is run by Bus Eireann. At present, Bus Eireann contracts out 40 per cent of the service Eireann to private operators.
However, Mr O'Dea said the arrangement with Bus Eireann should stay. A huge amount of administration was involved, and he was doubtful that the private operators would be able to put that in place.
The issue of safety was vital. Bus Eireann implemented safety regulations rigidly. Even if private operators said they would organise safety standards regionally, they would not be uniform.
"I have spoken to people both in the private and public sector and I am convinced that if we took Bus Eireann out of the equation the whole system would collapse. Cartels would develop which could hold the Government to ransom," he warned.
The Minister said he had consulted widely with international operators in Britain, the US and Canada and had examined the school transport experiences in a number of European countries.
"We have looked at the whole thing in some detail and we are now convinced that we have a very cost-effective system." The current annual cost of the scheme is £42 million.