Donna McGettigan (Clare, Sinn Fein)

I want to talk about a worrying issue that affects parents and pupils in Shannon, Six-mile-bridge and Newmarket on Fergus in Clare when they are using school transport and the problems that come with the integration of our school transport system into the public service. Last year, the NTA made a significant investment in public transport in Shannon and the surrounding areas. This was very welcome and a step forward in resolving a lot of issues with the previous service. However, the integration of the long-established, reliable school transport service with this public service has raised alarm bells, especially for the parents who rely on it to get their children to school safely and on time. Parents like Aoife Keogh and Edel Rafferty have been tirelessly monitoring these issues day in and day out since last year and have seen first hand how the pilot scheme has failed to meet basic safety and logistical needs. One of the most pressing concerns is that drivers in the new transport pilot scheme are not Garda vetted. This is a clear and unacceptable discrepancy. All drivers in the dedicated school transport service are Garda vetted, as they should be, given that the majority of their passengers are minors. This issue was acknowledged by the authorities when Aoife and Edel raised it with them yet it remains unaddressed. There should be no difference in child safeguarding standards between the two services.

The logistics of these services are also unacceptable. Take the 316 route from Six-mile-bridge. Pupils on the first bus arrive almost an hour early for school while those on the second bus are arriving late. This means children are left hanging around or are forced to rush into school without enough time for the basic necessities like using their lockers, going to the bathroom or getting to breakfast club before class. This issue has also been raised several times. I have been sent several screenshots of the bus pick-up times being consistently late. On the Newmarket on Fergus service pupils are consistently forced to wait for up to an hour after school for a bus home. This is simply not good enough and we cannot continue to accept these inefficiencies and delays that put unnecessary pressure on our children. These services also do not have seatbelts, as city buses are being used in rural areas. There was also a promised bus stop outside the school that has not been delivered. Pupils are left on narrow footpaths and this lack of infrastructure and the failure to implement promised improvements has only added to the sense of frustration in this scheme. We are being told this pilot scheme could be rolled out as a national scheme, but how can we trust this when there are so many glaring issues with it that remain unresolved? The bottom line is our children should be able to access a transport system to and from school that is safe and reliable and so far that has not been the case here.

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