Call to update school bus service that’s as old as Armstrong moon walk

OUTDATED school bus arrangements have not changed since Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon.

Now the Green Party wants an end to the history lesson and the service brought more into line with modern times. Catchment areas, which decide which children can take what bus to what school, were first drawn up in 1969 and have not been reviewed since.

At that time Jack Lynch was Taoiseach, the Troubles in the North were only beginning and the country was still four years away from joining the EEC. More importantly for today’s pupils, some of the communities they now live in were not even built at the time, while some of the schools that were then in operation have closed or merged in the intervening 35 years and new ones have sprung up.

Problems with the system were highlighted in Co Galway earlier this month when a couple threatened to take Education Minister Noel Dempsey to court to get their daughter a seat on a bus going to the school of her choice.

John O’Donoghue and Catherine Sides, who live on the Galway-Clare border, are of mixed faiths and wanted their daughter Katie to go to a non-denominational school in Gort, outside their catchment area.

The rules meant she was only allowed access to the bus going to the local girls’ school in Kinvara even though the Gort bus stopped outside their door and her brother was allowed take it because the nearest boys’ school is in Gort. The threat of legal action was lifted after the Department of Education granted Katie a temporary bus pass, but Green Party education spokesman Paul Gogarty said similar situations were bound to arise unless a nationwide review was carried out.

“Ireland has seen significant changes in the distribution of population and in educational practices since 1969. Society has become increasingly urban and new systems of education such as multi-denominational schools have been added to the mix,” said Mr Gogarty.

“In the face of such dramatic change, a review of catchment areas and boundaries is long overdue. He called on the minister to set up a review group and aim to make the necessary changes before the next school year finished.

A spokeswoman for the department said, however, there were no plans to review the boundaries.

“Most of the growth in population has taken place within existing catchment areas,” she said.