School buses - Absurd rules leave parents in the lurch

PARENTS across the country will sympathise with the plight of families in Kilmihill, Co Clare, where children will soon be by-passed by the school bus.

Because of the vagaries of 40-year old boundary regulations for measuring the range of the free transport system, they face the prospect of having to make their own arrangements for post-primary children to attend the school of their choice. The existing regulations pre-dated the explosion of community, comprehensive, and vocational schools and colleges in towns around rural Ireland over the last three decades.

For an appeals board to uphold the department’s decisions based on outdated principles and boundaries is questionable. Such regulations often take no account of the changing demographics of modern Ireland.

The Kilmihill situation highlights the need for a thorough review of an anomalous situation whereby kids can avail of a free bus to a school 12 miles away but must make their own arrangements to get to a school half that distance from their homes.

This is absurd but unsurprising in a scenario where resources have been taken from children with special needs and where thousands are forced to learn in dilapidated buildings more in keeping with the era of Dickens.