{"id":675978,"date":"2026-11-05T18:26:10","date_gmt":"2026-11-05T18:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/675978\/"},"modified":"2026-11-05T18:26:10","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T18:26:10","slug":"school-transport-costs-ran-e96m-over-budget-last-year-dail-hears-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/675978\/","title":{"rendered":"School transport costs ran \u20ac96m over budget last year, D\u00e1il hears \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The cost of providing school transport went over budget by \u20ac96 million in 2025, the D\u00e1il Public Accounts Committee<\/a> (Pac) has been told. <\/p>\n

Comptroller and Auditor General<\/a> Seamus McCarthy said there was a \u201clack of transparency around funding\u201d for the bus services that catered for about 181,000 pupils, including about 24,000 with special needs.<\/p>\n

McCarthy said the original provision for school transport was \u20ac383 million, but the ultimate spend was \u20ac479 million, some 25 per cent over the budget. <\/p>\n

The school system is funded by the Department of Education<\/a>, which contracts Bus \u00c9ireann<\/a> to provide the service. Bus \u00c9ireann, in turn, operates about 6 per cent of the services and contracts out the remainder to private operators.<\/p>\n

A total of \u20ac641 million has been allocated by the department for school transport in 2026, with the figure for 2027 rising to \u20ac687 million, the department said. <\/p>\n

McCarthy told the Pac the explanation he received for last year\u2019s overrun was \u201cunderfunding in the estimate relative to what was required to meet the demand for school transport\u201d. <\/p>\n

McCarthy also told the committee the cost of providing transport for 24,000 pupils with special education needs was \u201csignificantly higher than for mainstream services\u201d. <\/p>\n

For the 2025\/2026 school year, more than 30,500 pupils with complex special needs are enrolled in special schools or special classes within mainstream schools, an increase of about 70 per cent since 2020. McCarthy said the accounts showed a funding provision of \u20ac46 million intended for special needs assistance in 2025 had been allocated to \u201cother payroll subheads\u201d. <\/p>\n

Fianna F\u00e1il TD Martin Daly told the committee the accounting was a cause of concern and that in 2024 there was an overrun of \u20ac131 million in the department\u2019s overall budget. In 2023 the overrun was \u20ac99 million and in 2022 it was \u20ac69 million, he said. \u201cThese are very significant overspends.\u201d <\/p>\n

[\u00a0There is \u2018strong potential\u2019 for integration of school and public transport, committee toldOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Secretary general at the Department of Education Bernie McNally told the committee there had been exceptional events in recent years including the Covid pandemic and an influx of Ukrainians that added a need for 6,000 more places. <\/p>\n

She also noted the cost of transport for pupils with special education needs was higher than that for mainstream students. She said 60 per cent of the budget was going on 13 per cent of the pupils needing transport. Pupils with special education needs each cost the scheme \u20ac14,000 while the comparable figure for other children was \u20ac480. <\/p>\n

McNally also said that while implementation of the recommendations of a school transport review was \u201cwell under way\u201d, full implementation, to enable a significant increase in the numbers of children accessing the service, would rely on technology improvements. McNally said other logistical, timing and funding challenges will also have to be resolved.<\/p>\n

She said the current operation required a one seat, one ticket safety rule which restricted the number of tickets issued. Under-utilisation of the service, she said, was a feature as many ticket holders do not use it on a full-time basis.<\/p>\n

\u201cReliable and timely utilisation data\u201d is not currently available to support a policy change that would enable those who want seats to avail of the seats not being used. <\/p>\n

Jean O\u2019Sullivan, chief executive of Bus \u00c9ireann, told the committee the school transport scheme was now the largest of its kind in Europe. In 2025, she said, Bus \u00c9ireann directly operated about 6 per cent of the mainstream routes, working with 1,448 contractors and serving 11,241 routes.<\/p>\n

She said by combining the department\u2019s policy direction and oversight with Bus \u00c9ireann\u2019s operational experience and delivery capability, \u201cwe can work together to enhance the numbers accessing the school transport scheme.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The cost of providing school transport went over budget by \u20ac96 million in 2025, the D\u00e1il Public Accounts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":675979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[27801,38183,6466,61,60,43,12467],"class_list":["post-675978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-bus-eireann","tag-comptroller-and-auditor-general","tag-department-of-education","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-public-accounts-committee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=675978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/675978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/675979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=675978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=675978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=675978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}