Primary pupils face €50 school bus charge

PRIMARY school children will be charged to travel on the school bus for the first time next autumn as part of a €4.5 million savings package on school transport.

Although it is far less than the €500 annual charge proposed for all school bus passengers by An Bord Snip Nua last year, the National Parents Council-Primary warned that the new €50 fee for those travelling to hundreds of rural primary schools is another added cost to families in the budget.

“The families being hit with school bus charges are the same people losing out on child benefit payments and paying higher taxes,” said council chief executive Áine Lynch.

The primary school bus charge will be limited to €110 per family, but second-level students using the service face a €50 rise to €350 a year.

The distance that third-level students must live from college to qualify for higher grant payments is being almost doubled to 28 miles as part of Education Minister Mary Coughlan’s plan to save €22 million next year and €51m a year on student support by 2014. She had to seek an extra €43m last week to cater for this year’s growth in eligible students, but she is also imposing a 4% cut in payment rates next year on top of this year’s 5% cut.

The Department of Education investment in colleges will be cut by 7% next autumn but this will be offset by the additional €500 per student they can charge undergraduates, although families with more than one child at college will pay the same €1,500 as this year for second and subsequent children. Students whose families earn up to €56,000 will only pay half the charge.

Union of Students in Ireland president Gary Redmond described Budget 2011 as the Pearl Harbour of Irish education that will deeply wound thousands of existing and potential students, and said the cuts will simply mean some will be forced to drop out of college.