Fury over school buses as families left without places

Westmeath councillors have called for urgent changes to the school transport system after families were left without bus places just days before the start of the new school year.

Cllr Emily Wallace said she was “absolutely mad raging” at the situation and called for Eircodes to be removed from the criteria used by Bus Éireann to determine whether children qualify for school transport.

She told the September meeting of the Mullingar Kinnegad Municipal District that families had been left waiting until the end of August to find out whether their children would have a school bus place.

Some families, she said, had their money refunded on the Friday of the August bank holiday weekend and were then told they were not entitled to a bus ticket.

She said buses were continuing to travel the same routes and passing the homes of children who were not being picked up because they had been deemed ineligible.

Those children could then enter a lottery for a place, despite some buses travelling only half full or three-quarters full, she said.

Cllr Wallace said the current system was unfair to families and could result in children being refused transport because they lived just a short distance inside a boundary.

“We have people missing out on bus routes by 200 metres because of the boundary line on a map,” she said.

She said the situation was also at odds with efforts to encourage sustainable transport and reduce the cost and environmental impact of families driving children to school.

“I would like that we again correspond to Bus Éireann,” she said. “I’m sorry for the rant but it is so unfair and it is going on years – and they say 2030, it’s not good enough. Take the Eircode out of it. It is not their job to decide which school our children go to.”

The mayor, Cllr Niall Gaffney, supported the proposal, saying the current system had made what was intended to be an objective process “the subjectively unfairest possible”.

“You could be on the bus for three years, you could have been getting a concessionary ticket and then all of a sudden, year four you’re out, and your siblings, there’s no consideration,” he said.

Cllr Aoife Davitt said the issue could also have consequences for schools, particularly larger schools which rely on pupils travelling from rural areas.

She argued that children should be able to choose a secondary school based on factors such as the subjects offered rather than having their choice effectively determined by the school transport system.

She also criticised the timing of decisions, saying families should not be left scrambling for transport in August. “If you are a returning child to school for a second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth year, that already should be in the mix,” she said.

Cllr Davitt said decisions on school transport should be made months earlier, and additional buses arranged where necessary before the beginning of the school year.

She described the problem as a national issue rather than one confined to Mullingar or Westmeath.

Cllr Ken Glynn also backed Cllr Wallace and said the problem was affecting urban as well as rural families. “If you have both parents out working and you worry how you’re going to get the kids to school, it’s just crazy,” he said.

He said it was not the role of any organisation to decide which school was best for a child or family.

He also described the situation as contradictory to national efforts to encourage people to use public transport instead of cars.

“They’re pushing, they’re pushing, take the cars off the road and let’s do this and we’ll have everyone cycling and we’ll put buses on and they won’t even give you the bloody bus spaces,” he said.

Cllr David Jones said he had dealt with parents whose children had used school buses for years but were told they had lost their places less than a week before school started. He said an attempted pilot route from Delvin, where more than 70 children travel to Mullingar, had also highlighted the problems with the current system.

Some children from the area were getting buses from Turin, while others were being driven or car-pooled into Mullingar, he said.

Cllr Jones said changes to existing public bus timetables could also help address some of the problems, but he said contacts with Bus Éireann and the National Transport Authority were often met with generic responses rather than consideration of local circumstances.

“This year is definitely one of the worst I’ve seen with the cases we’re dealing with. It’s just simply not good enough,” he said.

He also questioned what had happened to recommendations from the national school transport review. “More has to be done, especially after a school transport review that took six years to complete, that we would hold these actions, I think over 90 actions were put into it. How many of them are actually being enforced right across the country? Very few.

“So what’s the point in doing these reviews if you don’t implement them?”

Cllr Gaffney said the council would write to Bus Éireann “in the strongest possible terms” about the issue.