Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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Bus Éireann has advised that the vast majority of vehicles that were temporarily suspended from use following spot checks arranged by the Company, were suspended until any minor defects detected during the inspections - i.e. those having no significant or immediate effect on the safety of the vehicle, or other road users - were rectified, before being permitted back into service. These type of defects can occur on any kind of road vehicle in normal day to day operations. These random and targeted tests – which are extra safety tests carried out by Bus Éireann - are similar in nature to the NCT tests carried out on private vehicles, where the vehicles are often recalled to address minor defects.

The inspections are an essential part of Bus Éireann's strong safety protocols, which collectively have served to deliver an incident rate of well below one incident per million journeys undertaken on Bus Éireann school buses in recent years.

On the completely separate issue in relation to statistics around incidents and accidents on school transport vehicles these are the figures. Since 2004 there have been seven fatalities on, or within a school bus; including the five students who died in the tragic Kentstown accident, a school bus driver, and a motorcyclist who collided with a school bus. Some 300 injuries were reported in this 11 year period, during which schoolchildren holding tickets issued by Bus Éireann under the School Transport Scheme made almost half a billion individual journeys (471,560,000).

Many of the injuries were relatively minor, and details of related hospitalisations are not known.

As requested by the Deputy, the details for each of the relevant years are attached in tabular form.