Plenty of talk on seatbelts but no action

THE fitting of seat belts on buses, and especially those used to transport schoolchildren, has been under discussion in the relevant Government quarters since 1999 but, to date, nothing has been done.

In 2003, the then Transport Minister, Seamus Brennan, said seat belts would be fitted to all new school buses.

At that time, the opposition was quick to point out that most of the bus fleet used for transporting children to and from school was made up of old vehicles so belts did not apply.

In 1999 a report, considered by the Government of the day, strongly recommended that seat belts be fitted to all buses.

Back then, a Dáil committee recommended the phased introduction of seat belts, but legislation has still not made it compulsory.

A report commissioned by the Government showed it would cost in excess of €60 million to upgrade Ireland’s fleet of school buses where up to three children are allowed to sit on two-person seats, unrestrained.

The figure of €60m-plus covered the cost of providing new buses, as well as fitting belts to existing ones, as the three-to-a-seat ratio would have to be abandoned if belts were provided.

The Department of Education contract is held by Bus Éireann and most recent figures show the company paid private bus operators a record €70m in 2004 for providing extra capacity, particularly on the school transport scheme.

Payments by Bus Éireann to private sub-contractors have risen by 7.6% in the past two years alone.

A few years ago the company was paying about €34m to private sub-contractors.

It is estimated that 1,700 suppliers, many of them small private bus operators, are contracted as part of this school transport scheme.

Most of the sub-contractors are small, rural-based operators and about 150,000 children use the school bus service each day.

In 2003, a school bus operator, found negligent when a four-year-old boy was injured during horseplay on the bus, won his appeal to the High Court.

The 21-seat bus, belonging to James O’Callaghan from Killarney, did not have seat belts and he had been successfully sued in the Circuit Court on this point.

But, in his appeal before the High Court, the judge declared that while there might be a strong case for introducing seat belts into school buses, such belts were not normally found in school buses and, under existing legislation, buses with more than eight seats were not required by law to be fitted with belts.

Statistically, buses and coaches represent the safest form of road transport, but when accidents do occur, they can result in heavy casualties, as yesterday’s tragedy illustrated.

Experts on transportation safety agree that of those seated passengers who have been killed or injured in bus or coach accidents, many would have suffered less severe injuries had seat belts been available to them.

In January 2001 the Government promised a radical review of safety on school buses in the wake of figures showing, on average, two children were dying due to accidents every year.

In one year alone, 1998, eight children lost their lives either coming from or going to school on official transport.