The Department of Education and Science has accepted a report from the Ombudsman which found it failed to provide school transport for a child with special needs.
However, a spokesman for the Department said that school transport worked very well for the vast majority of the 9,000 children with special needs brought to school every day.
He said it was impossible to assess the impact on the system as a whole of this ruling, as every case was different. He was not aware of other cases relating to this issue with the Ombudsman.
It was impossible, therefore, to estimate the cost of implementing the recommendations, he said.
The Ombudsman recommended that compensation be paid to the child, whom he found had suffered discrimination; that the Department devise and publish a school transport scheme for children with disabilities; and that cases involving exceptional circumstances be dealt with on the basis of their merits and not of any arbitrary financial restrictions.
Much of the Ombudsman's report concerned the lack of information about the help available.
He pointed out that school transport for children with disabilities was provided by the Department on an administrative basis rather than a legislative one, and therefore there was no published scheme. Details of the Department transport grants for children are not published, he said.
The office of the Ombudsman pointed out that the present system, whereby a maximum grant is paid regardless of the distance to be travelled, was inequitable. The Department pointed out that a cost limit of £9 per child per day had been established, and the Ombudsman commented that there was no information as to how this figure was arrived at.
"Unless the Departments of Finance and Education and Science are willing to provide grants in the form of mileage rates which relate to the actual cost of travel, the transport scheme will continue to be, in real terms, a scheme which benefits only those children who can travel in economically viable groups or who live close to their schools," the Ombudsman said.
"This is a situation which is discriminatory and should, I believe, be rectified."
In accepting the recommendations, the spokesman for the Department said it regarded the report as an important part of the whole review of the school transport scheme. This carried 165,000 children annually, at a cost of £40 million.