I am surprised to see the motion being tabled, bearing in mind that the Committee for the Environment has supported some new measures yet, as other Members have said, its report has been sitting on the shelf gathering dust for a long time. The Committee saw the need to put preventative measures in place. However, no action has been taken to respond to that.

I support the motion because it deals with children's safety, something that many Members have been involved with since their earliest days in politics. The issue is of particular importance and interest to me because at least two children in my constituency have been killed in the past few years while alighting from buses on their way to and from school. It is an issue that school boards of governors, of which many of us are members, are also concerned about. As the father of three young children, I am conscious of the need for child safety.

However, children are a law unto themselves, especially when they are not supervised or are in a crowd. When they mess about and try to impress among a crowd of their peers, they forget about the dangers that their parents constantly warn them about. Children do not always pay attention when they are fooling around. Unfortunately, when this behaviour is teamed with a bus and a busy road it can become a fatal combination. The bus driver is responsible for the children's safety until they descend from the bus. However, there has never been an extra adult present to supervise the children as they get on and off the bus. Bearing in mind the exuberance of children, that seems to be the one truly preventative action that would help them be more obedient and well behaved when travelling to and from school.

I have no illusions that school buses are as chaotic and full of mischief as they were when most of us travelled on them. The driver of the bus has his or her work cut out just driving the bus, let alone trying to control the children or to see where they get to once they get off the bus. One way to remedy that is for another responsible adult to be on the bus to keep the peace and, more importantly, to supervise the children as they get on and, especially, off the bus. The obvious rebuttal to that is that it will cost money. With the education budget under strain, many will say that it cannot be done. However, what price is a child's life?

Mr Kennedy mentioned the relevant American laws regarding school buses. I am in favour of many of those because in America buses deliver 75% to 80% of children to either school or home. The Department could look to the Community Transport Association to ascertain the initial cost of setting up such an operation. Something must be done to protect our children from accidents caused by misadventure.

School buses in America are fitted with four sets of lights. Strobe lights make drivers aware of the presence of a school bus, even in poor visibility. Buses also have loud horns, similar to those found on lorries and large vehicles, that sound when reversing. All those adjustments have been made purely to save lives, and have been effective. Something similar must be put in place in Northern Ireland.

One of the most innovative American laws is that traffic on both sides of the road must stop when a school bus is pulling in to let children on or off. That law alone would prevent children from being knocked down, and thus injured or killed, because all traffic on the street would come to a complete standstill.

The law lets a child enjoy his or her trip to and from school, but it does not prevent the odd lapse in concentration that has been fatal in the past. The problem with the law is that it works if there is a system of special school buses. In Northern Ireland, school buses are not specially identified. They must be altered to distinguish them from other buses.

The sentiment of the law is ideal, but its implementation will require not only buses being identified as such, but police officers keeping those who flout the law from harming children. However, the police do not have sufficient numbers to patrol the streets of Northern Ireland let alone enforce new laws that will benefit our children and keep them safe. More police officers should be available in the Province to educate schoolchildren in road safety. The Belfast Agreement has reduced the number of police officers, and there are very few left to give our children those life-saving talks.

Something is needed to keep our children safe. We must talk to American schools and learn how their children have benefited from the new measures that were put in place to protect them from being killed when going to and from school by bus. We must investigate what has been done in Australia, France and other European countries. We must investigate the best way to safeguard our children because, as we all agreed, something must be done. We cannot afford to have another child injured or killed.

First, I will make two observations. The House will note the irony that it took a member of the Ulster Unionist Party to drag the Minister here to talk about some of the issues that the Environment Committee had been trying to get him to talk about for, apparently, four or five months.

Secondly, it is nice to hear that members of Sinn Féin, according to Gerry McHugh, now believe that there is nothing more important than the lives of children. I am sure that many families have wished over the past 30 years that that lesson had been learnt a long time ago.

I want to ask a couple of questions about some of the issues that have been raised. We must put the issue of school transport in context. Mr Gallagher said that, every day, there are over 110,000 journeys to and from school. Over a school year, that works out as 36 million journeys. Danny Kennedy said that there are 300 accidents per year. That puts the degree of safety with which children are delivered to school in context. All those who are involved should be congratulated.

Several issues have been raised today. Some of them require minor changes to be made to bus stops; others require extensive expenditure. For example, several Members referred to the seat belt issue. To fit seat belts in all buses would require the purchase of many extra buses. The capital costs of that would be about £125 million, and the additional running costs, which would be paid to the education and library boards, would be another £40 million. Put in context with the £46 million that is currently spent on school transport, it amounts to an increase of 100% each year. Although I agree that we must ensure that youngsters are delivered to school safely, it would have been useful if Members who spoke about that measure had suggested what proportion of the Budget they would use to facilitate it.

We must bear in mind that to put seat belts in buses does not guarantee that youngsters will use them. Should extra staff be employed? Should teachers travel on buses to ensure that seat belts are worn? Some of the proposals that have been suggested raise as many questions as they provide solutions.

It has been mentioned that when a bus stops to allow children to alight, traffic coming from the rear and the front should be stopped. We do not have dedicated school buses. It is often impossible to tell whether a bus is carrying ordinary passengers or youngsters. The buses could be fitted with lights. However, given the location of many bus stops, does that mean that drivers, who may be travelling at 30mph or 40mph should realise that there is a school bus ahead, and stop and wait until it moves off? Some investigation must be done into the road safety issue of cars suddenly stopping in the middle of a road. That is what often leads to accidents in which cars ram into other cars.

Another suggestion was that people could be employed to supervise at bus stops. That is an admirable idea, but have the resource implications been considered? To introduce a no-standing policy on school buses would cost £22 million to provide the necessary additional buses.

I would have liked to have heard some ways in which those issues could be resolved. Perhaps there will be some answers in the winding-up speeches.

I thank the mover of the motion. It is interesting to hear what has been said on those important issues. This appears to be my swansong as a Minister. I am disappointed by the absence of a piper to play 'Farewell to the Creeks' as I leave.

We could arrange that.

TOP

Could you, Mr Wilson? Thank you very much indeed.

I have been honoured and privileged to serve the Assembly. I thank all concerned for their help, co- operation, kindness and courtesy during my time as Minister. I wish my successor every success in his new role.

I have always been a believer in the old maxim, "moderation in all things". Even in our belief that our individual wisdom is the way in which the world should perform, it is sometimes lax in the reactions of those whose task it is in life to offer instant opinions on all things great and small. No section of the community has all the virtues or all the vices. Most people try to do their jobs as best they can, even if they are not always successful. He who has never failed to reach perfection has the right to be the harshest critic. However, criticism is good for people in public institutions. In a democracy, no institution can expect to be free from that.

No one has a monopoly on care and wisdom. I am a father, a grandfather and a former professional childcare worker. I am aware of the need for love, care and protection of the person and property, and so too are the staff in the Department of the Environment. The Department's staff have a role to perform, and they are aware of that when they appear before Committees. It would be helpful if Committee members spoke with departmental staff rather than at them when they appear before Committees to answer questions.

I listened with great interest to Members' contributions. All right-minded people share their desire to reduce the number of deaths and serious injuries on our roads. I have devoted much of my efforts as a Minister to pursuing this objective and have made road safety my top priority. I am spurred on by the knowledge that nearly all deaths and injuries on the roads are avoidable. Most are the result of human error, such as carelessness, inattention, excessive speed, alcohol consumption, by pedestrians and drivers, and the failure to wear seat belts.

The avoidable death or injury of a child is particularly tragic. I speak for all Ministers, especially the three Ministers with responsibility for road safety and school transport, when I say that we will continue to do what we can to improve our Departments' response.

The Assembly will appreciate that my departmental responsibilities are confined to overall co-ordination of the road safety strategy, road safety education and publicity, and vehicle and driving standards. The Department of Education is responsible for policy on school transport provision, and the Department for Regional Development is responsible for road traffic regulations governing the operation of school buses and other traffic. In the context of that division of responsibility, I will read extracts from the responses of the Department of Education and the Department for Regional Development to the Committee for the Environment's school transport report as set out in the composite response that I sent to the Chairperson of the Committee yesterday. It is a response to the recommendation for the provision of a dedicated and segregated school bus system, similar to the yellow bus system in the United States

"The Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions in Great Britain recently announced a number of pilot schemes to test the effectiveness of these yellow buses. Pilot trials have been delayed while the manufacturers revise the design to accommodate European requirements. It is hoped that the trial will now proceed in the early part of 2002. While the Department will discuss with DRD the merits of undertaking pilot schemes here, it would seem more appropriate in the DE's view to await the outcome of the trials in England before pursuing this recommendation."

The Department for Regional Development's response was as follows:

As regards the proposal for several pilot schemes to assess the impact of preventing vehicles from overtaking school buses when children are boarding and alighting, Mr Kennedy has already acknowledged that the Environment Committee's school transport report recommended that research be carried out.

In response to the Committee, the Department for Regional Development stated:

I now turn to the issue of child road safety. First, I thank the Member for his kind remarks when opening the debate. I have sought to do what I can within the programmes for which I have responsibility, and I appreciate the sentiments that have been expressed by many Members about my efforts on road safety issues.

Although Northern Ireland does not have the type of dedicated and segregated school bus system that is used in the USA, it is nevertheless reassuring that the safety record of buses and coaches in Northern Ireland is good. In the four years from April 1997 to March 2001, 131 children, aged between four and 15, were killed or seriously injured on Northern Ireland's roads while travelling to or from school. Six of the children killed and 93 of those seriously injured were pedestrians. One of those killed and 18 of those seriously injured were car passengers. Six of the children seriously injured, but none of those killed, were bus, coach or minibus passengers. Buses are, therefore, a relatively safe form of transport for children, compared to travelling on foot or by car, and that is further supported by the fact that more children travel to school by bus than by car.

However, I must emphasise that although the number of children killed or seriously injured as pedestrians in the vicinity of buses is not separately identified in police statistics, road safety practitioners, schools educational authorities, parents, police and all involved in road safety widely recognise such areas as being danger zones. Child behaviour in and around bus stops when going to and coming from school is widely accepted as requiring attention from all road safety authorities.

A key area in addressing that problem is road safety education in schools, and I will outline what my Department currently does in that field and our plans for new initiatives. The Assembly is already aware of the additional resources that I was able to secure in the 2001-02 Budget to increase the number of road safety education officers from 11 to 21 from last May. Those officers provide valuable support for schools through the annual provision of over £650,000 worth of road safety teaching materials suitable for different age groups. Among those materials is the road safety teaching aid calendar that is provided to every nursery and primary school classroom in Northern Ireland. The calendars are used as a classroom teaching aid throughout the school year, and they feature guidance on behaviour when travelling to school by bus and advice on how to cross the road after getting off the bus.

The increase in the number of road safety education officers will allow the introduction, from October, of practical child pedestrian training in support of classroom training at various primary schools, mainly in areas of social deprivation. Research indicates that children from deprived areas are more likely to be involved in a traffic collision than other children.

Although the work of the road safety education officers is being targeted particularly at schools in those areas, my Department has an overall objective of ensuring that every school in Northern Ireland is visited at least twice a year. In 2002-03 it is expected that officers will make over 4,000 school visits.

Other work by road safety education officers that is relevant to child road safety includes: cycling proficiency programmes in schools, which train 10,000 children each year; working with post-primary schools to deliver courses on road traffic studies - approximately 160 post-primary schools offer formal traffic studies as a timetable subject, with 71 schools offering the courses as a GCSE subject known as motor vehicle and road user studies; organising visits by theatre groups to schools as part of a road safety education programme; and working with older pupils to encourage more responsible attitudes to their behaviour as road users as they reach driving age.

My Department's publicity campaigns, targeting the major causes of road casualties - excessive speed, alcohol consumption by both drivers and pedestrians, and failure to wear seat belts, are also relevant to child road safety, including the home-to-school journey.

Included in my Department's initial response to the Committee for the Environment's report on school transport is a commitment to consider further how to increase children's awareness of the dangers that they face when travelling to and from schools - as pedestrians and when boarding, or alighting from, school buses. Equally importantly, my officials are also considering ways of increasing drivers' awareness of the danger that they pose to child pedestrians, especially in the vicinity of school buses.

In developing these proposals, we will be working closely with the Department for Regional Development in the context of its safer routes to school policy, and with the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

My Department is also working with the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety on a major new proposal, using part of my allocations for 2002-03 and 2003-04 from the Executive's new directions fund. For the first time in Northern Ireland this will involve the introduction of a children's traffic club. Similar clubs have been very successful in Great Britain.

The children's traffic club provides the parents of every three-year-old with six free road safety books, at three-monthly intervals, as part of a structured and tailored introduction to road safety for parents and young children. All this documentation will integrate with information they will receive later at playgroup and primary school.

It is my objective that, through these interventions, children and other vulnerable road users will be made more alert to the dangers they face on the road, and that drivers and riders will associate buses with a critical danger area for children and adjust their driving accordingly.

I now turn to the Environment Committee's inquiry into school transport. I read some of the coverage of what was said to my officials when they gave a presentation to the Committee last week, and I am glad to have this opportunity, on the Floor of the Assembly, to refute some of that criticism. It is true that the Committee has only now received a formal response from my Department. This was due in part to a desire to be helpful to the Committee by producing a composite response. We wanted to collate the views of all those interested in the report, including the Department of Education and the education and library boards, as well as the Department for Regional Development and Translink, rather than send a piecemeal response. Clearly I now have to wonder if that effort was misplaced.

Moreover, it would not be true to suggest that there has been no dialogue with the Committee since the report's publication in September 2001. The report's four key recommendations on "3 for 2" seating, standing, seat belts, and signage and new lights have significant public expenditure implications, which have been mentioned. Expenditure could amount to over £180 million in capital costs, and over £60 million per year thereafter in recurrent costs.

I wrote to Dr McCrea in October 2001 to remind him of these implications and the potential impact on the nature of public transport provision. I wrote to Dr McCrea again in December 2001, seeking the Committee's view on the extent to which there was objective evidence from its investigations that road safety benefits commensurate with those additional costs are likely to be available. There has been nothing but silence since. I also asked from which Executive budgets the millions of pounds needed to implement the Committee's recommendations might be taken - perhaps health, housing, or education? Nothing but silence again.

This brings me to a serious point about the nature of public office. It is clear that many who spent the years of direct rule championing every populist cause that came along have found it difficult to adjust to the realities and responsibilities of devolution. Emotive slogans about the value of a child's life, or about disasters waiting to happen, are not a basis for good policy or responsible decision-making. We all, Executive Ministers no less than others, treat child road safety with the utmost seriousness. To suggest otherwise is deeply offensive. While I know that one cannot put a price on the life of a child, and I speak as a parent and grandparent, as a Minister who has to operate as part of an Executive with a finite budget -

Minister, I must advise you that you have less than a minute left.

Can you give me some allowance with this being my last speech of the evening? A couple of minutes will be enough for me to finish.

There were problems on the last occasion that I showed some latitude in the House. I cannot set a precedent.

You have lost your compassion, Mr Deputy Speaker.

This is the last time I shall address the Assembly as Minister of the Environment, and it is fitting that the topic on this occasion has been road safety. During my time in office I have made this my top priority. I have been saddened by every death and serious injury that has occurred. I have worked to obtain additional resources in this vital area and to support the work of other Departments and the police in their road safety efforts. I hope that the additional effort we have been able to put in on education, public awareness, and generally raising the public profile of road safety, will result in long-term dividends in reducing the death and injury on our roads.

I end by thanking all in the Executive and in the Chamber who have supported me in these efforts - even those who have sought to spur me on with barbed remarks. I wish my successor well in the task that lies ahead - not just on road safety but on the whole challenge of the Department of the Environment portfolio. I look forward to supporting him from the Back Benches.

We have had a useful exchange of views, and I place on record my thanks to all the Members who have contributed. I thank the Minister of the Environment for his presence, and I also acknowledge the presence of the Minister of Education.

What we have heard will, and can, be the basis for early progress on this important matter. I hope that will be so. It was my objective in bringing the motion to the House. Many Members made important points in their contributions. Dr McCrea, as Chairperson of the Committee for the Environment, said that his Committee's report had made several key recommendations and that it can be the basis from which to move forward. It would have been helpful if he had presented his report on behalf of his Committee to the Assembly earlier for wider debate. That possibility remains, and I hope that he will consider that to be appropriate.

I was grateful to Patricia Lewsley, who referred to the loss of a child and to the fact that that cannot and ought not to be calculated in monetary terms. Likewise, we must acknowledge that there are measures that cost comparatively little which could be implemented at an early stage. Indeed, Mr McHugh referred to lights that can be attached to school buses and vehicles.

I was heartened by the support from Mr McCarthy and the Portaferry Women's Institute, of which presumably he is not a member, though it is obvious that he takes on board their sensible views on this. Jane Morrice made the important point that saving lives is what we should be about. She also pointed out the cross-cutting nature of this and how it affects the work of the Department of the Environment, The Department of Education and The Department for Regional Development. Mr Gallagher rightly said that it is most dangerous when pupils are alighting from school buses, and statistics and research in America bear that out. Iris Robinson highlighted the overcrowding of school buses, and as the Chairperson of the Committee for Education and a local representative I am very aware of that. Constituency representatives are concerned about how best to address that problem urgently and effectively.

Mr McElduff welcomed the consensus on the safety of schoolchildren and referred to other models of good practice in places such as Germany. It might be important to engage in research to see if we can make and improve sensible recommendations. Arthur Doherty, with his customary modesty, misplaced I must say, welcomed the motion. He was very much singing from the same hymn sheet as Dr McCrea, and that was an interesting duet. Mr Shannon rightly paid tribute to the school bus drivers. It was never my intention to criticise school bus drivers. We all know the contribution that they make to the safe passage of children.

Mr S Wilson, with his customary and legendary style, rather overestimated even my ability to drag a ministerial Colleague, or a party Colleague, to the Assembly to chastise him in some way. However, he helped tease out many important issues in this debate - the cost issues and some of the practical outworking. That was an important contribution. We will be wise to look carefully at all the proposals. By all means, we should study the other models of good practice, whether in America or in other parts of Europe, but we would be wise to look closely at the practical outworking of that.

The Minister gave us a detailed response. I thank him for that and for his commitment shown and proved to road safety issues during his stewardship of his Department. He will have a continuing interest in that.

I am heartened by the collective view of Assembly Members that, between the Executive Departments that have some responsibility in this, progress can be made, proposals can be formed and legislation can be brought forward soon to improve and further enhance the safety of the children who attend our schools. I am grateful to all those who participated and thank them for their excellent contributions.

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