*Sixmilebridge parents.
PARENTS OF secondary school students in Shannon are fuming with Bus Éireann and the Department of Education at the dawn of a new school year.
Plans to bring in the 343 pilot bus scheme which will see students travel on the public bus service as opposed to the dedicated school bus transport system have caused consternation.
An approximate 434 teenagers will be travelling to Shannon via public bus with 282 from Sixmilebridge, 126 from Newmarket-on-Fergus and 26 from Cratloe.
Several meetings have been held this week. On Monday, officials from Bus Éireann and the Department of Education met with Maria Sheehan and Mary Costelloe, the principals of St Caimin’s Community School and St Patrick’s Comprehensive.
On Tuesday afternoon, officials from Bus Éireann and the Department of Transport met with a deputation of parents including Aoife Keogh (Sixmilebridge), Edel Rafferty (Sixmilebridge), Joanne McNamara (Newmarket-on-Fergus), Aisling O’Leary (Newmarket-on-Fergus), Lourda O’Neill (Cratloe) and Bree-Anne Conheady (Newmarket-on-Fergus).
A public meeting on Tuesday evening in Sixmilebridge was attended by 148 while there will be a protest this Thursday morning in The Bridge over the plans. The meeting was also attended by Clare TD, Cathal Crowe (FF), Cllr David Griffin (FF) and Cllr John Crowe (FG) along with Ms Sheehan and Ms Costelloe.
It is planned that there will be five buses from Sixmilebridge to Shannon each morning (07:50, 07:55, 08:20 and two at 08:25). The initial timetable had less buses for home time with three buses at 15:34 and one at 16:17.
For Newmarket-on-Fergus, morning buses will run at 08:08 and two buses at 08:13. The proposed home time times were for one bus at 15:38 and another at 16:18. Dropping Newmarket-on-Fergus students outside St Conaire’s NS has also been flagged as a concern given that students and parents will also be arriving to the Shannon primary school.
No timetable has been provided as of yet for Cratloe but a move of the collection point from the dual carriageway to The Woodcross Bar has been confirmed.
Deputy Crowe has conceded that his requests to Bus Éireann, the Department and Minister for Education, Norma Foley (FF) to abandon the pilot scheme will not be acceded to. “Whilst a continued call to abandon this scheme might be appealing and popular to many parents, it doesn’t reflect the reality that has been communicated to all politicians, school principals and, indeed, the wider body of parents, that this scheme will operate next week”.
Lack of consultation on the introduction of the scheme has been voiced by parents. Aoife Keogh flagged that the route amendment was released on April 18th, “it mentioned at the bottom that it might serve schools but never mentioned that they would scrap the school transport system, the relevant schools, parents and communities knew nothing about it”.
Notification was issued to schools on May 27th of the proposed changes, the correspondence issued to St Caimin’s was sent to their general email account and ended up in their spam folder, the first the school became aware of this correspondence was when parents raised concerns in the past week. “I don’t know why Bus Éireann felt it was the responsibility of schools to tell parents of the changes. We have a private arrangement and we pay them directly so what has it to do with the school, we don’t know if this was a deliberate ploy,” Aoife said.
Parents in Sixmilebridge questioned at Tuesday’s briefing if test runs had been carried out by Bus Éireann, officials said they had but were unable to provide a date on which this was completed.
Staggered bus times are proposed to collect students in Sixmilebridge, the 07:50 bus will transport 76 students, 50 students will be on the 07:55 bus, at 08:15 50 pupils will be transported and two further buses will leave at 08:25. This timetable is not workable, Aoife said, “The first bus is a double decker, it leaves Sixmilebridge at 7:50 and they expect it will drop 76 students to both schools in Shannon and be back to Sixmilebridge for 8:25. We have stated this over and over that it won’t work. There is no way that bus will be back on time. A double decker has a twelve minute dwell time to load passengers, they denied that but they couldn’t tell us how long it would take”.
A consequence of late buses is distressed students, she said, “They will be getting in trouble for being late for school. Bus Éireann are happy when 200 students get to school on time and don’t mind if 80 are late. It is a massive issue for parents, they are fuming about this. The capacity is for 302 students in Sixmilebridge and that only leaves twenty seats for the general public to use, if the general public board the bus before them then there is twenty students without a seat and left standing on the side of the road. Bus Éireann keep insisting we need to trial it and we will make changes as we go along. They will be late every day, get given out to the minute they get in the door. What a way to start your day as a first year, late, under pressure and stressed”.
She added, “They are disrupting our children’s education and it is the Dept of Ed providing the school bus system yet they are happy to make our children late for school and we are not happy about that, that is not acceptable”.
Capacity for buses at home time is another worry for parents. A capacity of 302 is required according to Aoife. “Our worst fear is someone is going to get hurt, they are pulling buses away, they have taken our school bus service off us, a lot of people are the full three kilometres from the school bus stop, they won’t allow children to walk, it is too far with all their bags and paraphernalia whether it is Home Economics or PE, we can’t see how allocated bus times home will work”.
Parents are calling for the school bus service to be restored until a workable solution is found. “By right the scheme should be paused and public consultation reopened and full transparency about what the 343 amendment was. We need to restore the school bus service until we reach a workable solution because at the moment it is not working for us”.
With a daughter preparing to start Transition Year and a son entering his second year, Aoife said their prior experience of the school bus system “worked brilliantly”. She explained, “it worked well around family life and home life and work, it meant we could drive to nearest bus stop, ninety seconds drive to the school, they’d be dropped to the school door and dropped home, I knew they were safe, I knew they wouldn’t stay on the bus and end up at the Airport for the day having the craic”.
