There has been a call for a full overhaul of School Transport Scheme with one Councillor saying it is not ‘fit for purpose in its current state’.
Aontú Councillor, Peter O’ Donoghue says
“Currently the scheme is leaving many children abandoned in rural Ireland with little children as young as 5 being left out of the scheme. This is crazy and it alone points to a scheme that the Minister in charge, Michael Moynihan, must change as a matter of priority”
“Schools will be reopening again in the coming weeks. This is an exciting time for students, but unfortunately many students will be left to find their own way to school this year due to a lack of transport. This is not acceptable”.
I have received many messages, emails and phone calls from very concerned parents in the Fermoy MD who have been informed by Bus Eireann that their children are not eligible for a school bus ticket this year due to a lack of available seats. Many of these parents have had their children taking the local school bus for years, with this year, being the first year, there is an issue with bus seat availability. The parents have now been informed that they must make their own arrangements to take their children to school.
This is not good enough!
Many of these school students are living in rural areas. Their parents are working full time to keep a house and home. They can’t afford to stop working to bring their children to school. They are now left in an extremely difficult and stressful position where many are having to consider giving up work. This response from Bus Eireann is not acceptable.
The department must look at ways to resolve this serious problem. One issue the department must address is the decision to treat students with access to public transport and students with no access to public transport the same when it comes to allocating concessionary tickets.
Currently this is not taken into consideration by the department and many children in rural Ireland are getting left behind as a result.
Also primary schools attended by students need to be taken into consideration when allocating bus tickets for students attending secondary schools. Primary schools which traditionally provided students for secondary schools in one town are now being informed that they are only eligible to be placed on the school bus to another town solely because they live closer to that town.
Examples of this are students who attended Bartlemy NS being informed they are eligible for the Midleton Bus and not the Fermoy bus even though Bartlemy students would traditionally go to Fermoy, and Kilworth NS students being informed they were only eligible for a bus to Mitchelstown even though the vast majority of Kilworth students would go to school in Fermoy as well.
Students living in villages where the primary schools are located far outside the village should be eligible for school transport.
Ballynoe village is just one example. The school sits approximately one mile from the village, yet students as young as 5 years of age are not eligible for school transport and are expected to walk that 1 mile in the middle of winter in dark mornings and evenings in all sorts of weather on a narrow footpath off a narrow windy road with heavy traffic. This is not right. No child of five can walk to school.
These are just three examples of how the school transport scheme can operate more efficiently and fairly.
The bottom line is that as it stands, many students in rural Ireland do not have transport to school for the 2026/27 school year. This is not acceptable and must be rectified immediately by the Minister and his department”.
