School transport frustrations to continue indefinitely – Lowry

The frustrations with School Transport, which are impacting students and families across Tipperary, look set to continue for a number of weeks.

Deputy Michael Lowry has been pursuing the matter on a regular basis as parents continue to vent their frustrations over their children being unable to secure a seat on the school bus, despite having availed of School Transport in previous years.

Deputy Lowry again raised the matter this week with the Department of Education, who announced in July last that it was waiving fees for all students for the coming school year as part of a wider package of cost of living measures. This resulted in 44,299 new applications in addition to the number already using school buses.

As part of the Budget earlier this week additional funding has been approved for the scheme which will allow Department officials, in consultation with Bus Éireann, to consider and evaluate where temporary additional capacity may be available. 
 
In a Statement from the Department, they say that ‘the initial focus will be where families applied on time and who previously held concessionary tickets, to alleviate the impact of the increased demands on the scheme for those families.   

'However, it is important to stress that this is subject to capacity considerations.  Constraints in sourcing vehicles and drivers in certain areas of the country may also mean that it may take a number of weeks to explore solutions for additional capacity.’

‘These are issues that should have been explored before the Minister for Education made the grandiose gesture of opening up the School Transport system’ says Deputy Lowry.

‘The first move should have been to ensure that there were sufficient buses available and that there were drivers available to run them. Efforts should also have been made at that time to rectify the ridiculous rule that prevents drivers over 70 years of age from driving school buses, despite the fact that they are permitted to drive tour buses and State vehicles.

‘It was alarming last week to see students from Cork driving tractors to get to school to ensure that they could make it to their classrooms’ he says.