Schoolbus spaces coming... but when?
CHILDREN who were previously given ‘concessionary’ tickets for school transport and applied on time for the free schoolbus scheme will be given spaces on buses.
Education Minister Norma Foley confirmed yesterday that she has secured additional funding for school transport as part of Budget 2023.
However, she was not able to confirm how soon students still awaiting seats will be accommodated. As part of the Government’s cost-of-living package announced in July, the fees for school transport were waived for the 2022/23 academic year.
This led to a large number of applications for the scheme, with 130,000 people looking for a free ticket.
As a result many children previously on the buses with ‘concessionary tickets’ were left without a space.
Tickets are primarily given to children deemed eligible, before the remaining tickets are assigned as ‘concessionary’.
As the number of people applying for the scheme increased, so too did the number of people deemed eligible.
Minister Foley said yesterday that attempts will now be made to ensure that children who were previously on the bus will receive seats.
‘This time last year there were 103,000 students that were in receipt of those tickets for school transport,’ she said.
‘At this point, we have 125,400 students who are in receipt of free tickets.
‘I am very conscious that we are in a cost-of-living situation and that there are a cohort of students who in previous years received concessionary tickets,’ she said.
‘We have secured funding for students who applied on time, [who] were previously in receipt of concessionary tickets and where there is capacity, we will be making the remaining seats available to them,’ she said.
She could not, however, confirm when the additional capacity might be added to the system. She said that while Bus Éireann will now work on securing the capacity, there are several ‘pinch points’ in the number of buses and drivers that will be available.
‘Every situation will be individual,’ Ms Foley said.
‘There’s no uniformity in terms of capacity across the country.’
Asked whether the issue would be resolved before the mid-term break at the end of October, the minister once again did not specify when the problem would be rectified.
She said that there have been ‘issues around concessionary’ tickets for many years and, as a result, she has ordered a review into the system.
The eligibility criteria will be assessed as part of this process.