Parents blamed for school bus seat fiasco

BUS ÉIREANN has blamed parents for hampering efforts to sort out school bus places by failing to pay their children’s transport fees on time - even though they have no guarantee of a seat.

As secondary schools begin to reopen today following the summer holidays, students in some parts of the country still do not know if they have a place on the school bus due to problems meeting new safety standards that require one seat per student instead of the old three students per two seats arrangement.

Some 7,500 students faced being left without a place when the new arrangement was announced last month although the figure is expected to be much smaller by the time the full school bus fleet is on the road later this week.

But Bus Éireann said yesterday the process of allocating places was being complicated by the failure of parents to pay their children’s fares when they applied for places. Fares ranged from €33 to €51 per student per term this year and were due to have been paid by last Monday.

Bus Éireann spokesperson Erica Roseingrave said it was an annual problem. “We had a deadline of August 22 and some parents have not paid. I don’t know how many but it’s common enough. Unfortunately that delays things for everybody else.”

She said efforts to allocate places would continue and Bus Éireann was confident of catering for all but a small number of students.

She said there was nothing to stop those students being carried on buses under the old three-per-two arrangement as the one student, one seat rule did not formally come into effect until December.

“There is still the potential to carry three for two so maybe that would be utilised in pockets. The Department [of Education] have asked us to do everything we can to accommodate students under the new arrangements but there would be no contravention of regulations in continuing the old arrangement until December.”

Meanwhile, 50 students, parents and public representatives from Co Limerick staged a protest outside the constituency offices of Minister for Youth Affairs Síle de Valera in Ennis over plans to force children to attend a school outside their catchment area for which they will not be entitled to school bus places.

Angry mothers, many of whom have full time jobs, warned they might have to keep their children at home because of the fiasco.

Forty pupils from the Clarina, Ballybrown and Mungret areas were told this month there was no room for them at the closest secondary school in Limerick five kilometres away and they would instead have to attend the Salesian Secondary School in Pallaskenry 13km away.

Noreen Cusack from Ballybrown, whose son is due to enter first year this week, said families were left inconvenienced and out of pocket because of the mess.

“The only reason our children are being sent to Pallaskenry is because there aren’t enough places in the city schools. If they were to attend the school in the city as they should be, there would be a bus service for them,” she said.

Labour’s Education spokesperson Jan O’Sullivan also attended the protest and said the provision of just one extra bus would solve the problem for the students. “We are talking about young children who have a constitutional right to be educated and that is being breached because no transport is being made available to them,” she said.