Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I will slightly recast the Topical Issue that I submitted, which was not to deal with school bus transport in west Waterford. It was specifically on a school transport issue arising between Ardmore and Dungarvan. If the Minister of State does not know that part of the world well, I remind him that Ardmore is the seat of St. Declan, who converted the Déise tribe to Christianity, which was how the name "the Déise" came to be synonymous with County Waterford, including this part of the county. Ardmore is 23 km from Dungarvan but it is 14 km from Youghal, which is across the border in County Cork. This is where our problem starts.

The vast majority of children who finish their primary schooling in Ardmore or in the Grange area, which is a little further down the road, go to Dungarvan for secondary school. There is a whole host of reasons for that, one of which is choice. There is one secondary school in Youghal and there are four secondary schools in Dungarvan. There are also historical associations; maybe mum or dad went to a school in Dungarvan. The fact of the matter is that this is not about county colours, as such. The majority of people in Ardmore will turn to Dungarvan for their services. It is their natural county town in the area. If you look at the figures that graduated from sixth class in the last year, only one child went to Youghal. One child went to Meánscoil San Nioclás, which is in Gaeltacht na nDéise and the rest of the children headed into Dungarvan.

The Minister of State will be able to see this in the issue I am about to detail further.

There are busloads of children heading from Ardmore to Dungarvan, but the problem is they do not start in Ardmore, as the nearest school eligibility criterion means that a school bus is not provided between Ardmore and Dungarvan.

We arrived at an Irish solution to an Irish problem. Approximately 10 km further up the road from Ardmore is Kiely's Cross, which is 12 km from Dungarvan, and a child can get a school bus from there to Dungarvan. We have a slightly insane situation whereby parents are ferrying their children 10 km out of the town - further if they are coming from Grange - and dropping their kids off at Kiely's Cross, where their kids are picked up by the school bus and brought into Dungarvan.

The main issue with this is that Kiely's Cross is on a dead-straight part of the N25. When I drove up to witness this in person and speak to the parents, I was doing just under 100 km/h but was still passed by three cars on that stretch of road. People fly on it. They should not be doing that speed, but they do. It is an area that is extremely prone to fog even though it was the end of August when I was there and it was still not dark in the morning.

Kids are being left out on the side of a main road in order to access these bus services. It is a real road safety issue. I have corresponded with the Minister, Bus Éireann and TII. I was amazed when I received correspondence back from TII. TII wished to advise me that it had not been aware of this issue and had since raised it with Waterford City and County Council, the road authority for the area. The correspondence pointed out that Kiely's Cross was a high-speed rural section of road that was not suitable for a bus stop, nor was it an appropriate location for a concentration of services as outlined in my submission. TII went on to say that it was now taking the issue up with the Department of Education and the council.

This is dangerous. Whatever about school bus provision, I do not want us to wait until there is an accident to arrive at a commonsensical solution to this problem.

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