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PARENTS IN A Co Meath village are to walk with their children to school, 10 kilometres away, on Monday to highlight the fact their children have been denied access to a school bus service.
12 school children in Kildalkey in the west of the county have been denied access to a ‘concession’ school bus ticket for the coming school year.
The parents in question lodged their applications for such a ticket in April. Two weeks ago they were informed by Bus Éireann that their application had been refused, including in a number of cases for students who were granted a pass in previous years.
As a means of drawing attention to the situation, one which has been replicated to different extents in other districts in recent weeks including Kilkenny, Kildare and Wicklow to name three, the parents of the children are to walk the distance to school with their children on Monday morning.
“It’s a dangerous road too,” says local mother Una Swords. “But we have to organise this. Not just for us, for the kids coming up next year, where there’s a big sixth class in the local primary.”
It warrants a bus to cater to the community.
Spare seats
A concession ticket is one in which spare seats on Bus Éireann school bus services are allocated to students travelling to a school which the company and Department of Education do not consider to be optimal for the district in which the child is living.
Kildalkey is placed roughly equidistant between Athboy and Trim in the Leinster county. However bus spaces for the schools in Trim are managed on a concession basis for residents of the village.
Una has two daughters of school-going age – one of whom was already placed in the all-girl secondary school in Trim, Scoil Mhuire, and the other who began first year last week.
Both girls have now been denied a bus ticket.
“Parents are trying to carpool and juggle their working lives, but it’s really tough,” she told TheJournal.ie.
Everyone has been sending loads of emails looking into the matter. Basically we’re not attending the secondary school that Bus Éireann thinks we should be. If we were going where they want then a second bus would be put on.
A concessionary bus ticket costs €350 for one pupil for a year, and €650 for siblings.
The local parents association has made repeat entreaties to Minister for Training and Skills John Halligan on the issue, who replied that he was making inquiries.
TheJournal.ie contacted Halligan for comment but no response was received prior to publication.
“This is an issue seen in other ways recently, such as in the shutting of the post offices,” said local Sinn Féin TD Peadar Tóibín.
It’s about the marginalisation of rural Ireland. You get so many people who settle in places like Kildalkey, who’ve come from Dublin say after being priced out of the market there, and now they’re simply stranded.
“You’ll end up with a situation where one brother will be able to get a school bus and another won’t.”
Random selection
A Department of Education spokesperson meanwhile said that concessionary tickets are distributed on a ‘random selection’ basis, with existing concessionary applicants given priority each year.
However, children not eligible to travel to a certain district, Trim in the case of Kildalkey, may miss out on a ticket if not enough places are available on the buses they have applied for.
“Under the terms of the scheme, the number of concessionary seats varies from year to year, based on the capacity of the buses running on all of the various routes and the number of eligible pupils accommodated on each route,” the spokesperson said.
Hence there is no guarantee that a non-eligible child who received a concessionary place in a previous year will receive a seat the following year, nor is there a guarantee that a sibling of a non-eligible child who receives a concessionary ticket will receive a seat. It is included in the terms and conditions on the Bus Éireann online application that availability of seats may vary from year to year and that concessionary transport cannot be guaranteed for the duration of a child’s education.
Una Swords counters this saying that an exception was made for nearby Ballivor when it found itself in the same situation as Kildalkey last year – a situation resolved by the provision of an extra bus.
A Bus Éireann spokesperson meanwhile said that is “not open” for the company “to establish a service for concessionary pupils”.
“The availability of concessionary transport may vary from year to year, is not available on public scheduled services and cannot be guaranteed for the duration of a child’s post primary school education cycle,” they said.
“This happened in Ballivor last year and they got another bus,” says Swords. “So there’s precedent. But they’re stringing us along a lot longer this year.”
We’ve been trying to let other parents of younger children know, because it’s a situation that’s only going to get worse. These kids are only 12 or 13 years old. They’re too young to be left in town on their own.
The issue compounds a difficult week for Bus Éireann in the context of school bus services. Yesterday, the father of a student with Down Syndrome was informed that his daughter could not travel on a school bus service in Co Cork without an escort.
The contractor operating the service was subsequently removed from the service of the route in question.
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One big problem in Ireland (Not entirely related to this article) is women with kids are encouraged to stay at home and have to depend on their husbands as creche fees are absolutely absurd. The price to put 2 children into my local creche is €1800 per month. This means that skilled women (in some cases men) are staying at home!
In Belgium they are subsidized so that they can work. Even a house cleaner is subsidized. This kind of system stops women having to stay at home to look after the kids and carry out house work and most importantly getting bullied by an unfair husband!
I don’t think subsidies are the way to go here. people here have this ‘the state should pay for my lifestyle choices’ mentality. Isn’t ireland broke? Why not pay a nanny to look after the kids when you are at work instead? have you a family support network, whereby your parents could help out?
Why didn’t you think of the costs a child involves before you had 2 children in the first place? people in westernized welfare state countries seem to just have kids and expect everyone else to pay for it. This doesn’t happen in the US, and it sure as heck doesn’t happen in any realistic state that doesn’t want to end up in the hands of the IMF.
No Lizzy.
Subsidies are the way to go if it means skilled women are going to be working and paying taxes, this will help Ireland. There are women with PHD’s that are staying at home to look after the kids as its not viable to put them into a creche. This is an awful waste of good skill.
No I don’t have a family support network, My parents are gone and my siblings have emigrated.
Also I don’t have 2 kids, I’m thinking about having kids so I suppose I did think of the costs a child involves as I went away and investigated it.
I was simply stating that the system that exists in Belgium encourages women to work and put their children into childcare rather than depending on their husband just in case the partnership falls apart.
It’s a bit of a tangent, but outside of medicine, I’ve never met anyone with a PhD who created anything
On the issue itself; Subsidies = cash, right? Why not make childcare tax deductible? “The people” abuse free cash just as surely as “the politicians.”
Wrong Chuck, in this case Subsidies does NOT= cash!
In Belgium is costs around €250 to send your child to a creche for the month, It costs this little as it is subsidised by the government. This is certainly the case in Kortrijk.
People pay a lot more tax over there alright but their system seems to work alot better than ours when you count in all the subsidies.
@ Lizzie
Clueless comments really.
Many countries subsidize child care, Belgium, Finland, Sweden, Germany, France and many others.
@ Chuck
“I’ve never met anyone with a PhD who created anything”
Astonishing. Who do you think develops pharmaceuticals? Medical devices? Computers? etc etc etc
“It’s a bit of a tangent, but outside of medicine, I’ve never met anyone with a PhD who created anything”
Read the 7th, 8th, 9th & 10th words there…….
I cannot believe it was only in 1990 that rape within a marriage was ok, if a guy had of tried it he would had swiftly got to meet my friend the baseball bat, I know some one who was raped within a marriage and it changed the person she was and the relationship she had with her child was destroyed
No offense to the Irish generation above me, but you guys have so much crap that you should be ashamed of. On a regular basis I’m thankful that I didn’t have to live into that kind of Ireland.
And in fairness I’ve little doubt the same applied to alot of other small countries too.
We still have a long way to go but we’re making progress.
don’t be so sure that the current generation is without it’s faults and skeletons in it’s closets.
It’s great for you to look back and say the past generations had so much crap but alot of this continous and people in their 20′s now are just as capable of doing the same stuff that people did 40-50 years ago and they do.
True, but at least now,with Internet, immigration and improves technology answer education we’re more influenced by the outside and don’t hold onto ideas and assumptions about how things should be as much.
But yea I’ve little doubt the next generation will look back at massive aspects of our lives and wonder “what the hell were they thinking “.
Adrian your living in a dream world with that reproachful look you throw at the past Irish, and the self congratulation of the present. It’s only because of outside influences that Ireland has OSTENSIBLY changed… the EU, internet and the piles of money invested here which allowed thousands travel and form their own identities free of toxic influences form the collective here.
Some things have changed, but we haven’t moved on that much as a nation, despite outside and technological advances. Still ruled by the corrupt, still women get less pay, less opportunites, still lots of pressure to conform, still poor people and the vulnerable are raped in many other ways then sexually,
and if you haven’t occassionaly fought to change the system that is here, you are just as guilty as anyone in the past. if you have, good on ya!
Well done to the women who have come forward with this story, hopefully you are healing now after all the abuse and shame on the men of this country who did this damage to there wives and families , thankfully we are a society who now can get help with most things and move forward……..well done to OWN try and keep going even though you have little funding .
Thumbs up if you blame the church!
What a dumb comment! Sigh….
I am ashamed of being a man
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