CERTAINTY NEEDED ON SCHOOL JOURNEY CARDS FOR HOMELESS CHILDREN
Labour Spokesperson on Children and Youth Affairs, Jan O’Sulllivan TD, is calling on the Government to tell homeless parents living in hotels around Ireland exactly when their children will be provided with free transport to and from school.
“This was one of the promises in the Government’s Action Plan on Housing and Homelessness- and a welcome one,” said Deputy O’Sullivan.
“I questioned the delay in providing this in the Dáil today, but the response from the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Simon Coveney, that they will be distributed ‘in weeks’, is not good enough.
The plan was announced on 19th July and the children have been back in school for half a term, but there seems to be no certainty about when the burden of having to pay bus fares to bring their children to and from schools will be lifted from these families.
There was an expectation that the scheme would be in place when schools go back after the Autumn break. That now looks most unlikely.
I am calling on Minister Coveney and Minister Zappone to give clear information to these families to remove at least one of the problems they are faced with as they try to maintain the continuity of their children’s lives in extraordinarily difficult circumstances.”