Wexford students denied bus tickets just days before start of new term
Wexford PeopleFor the past two years Clara* has travelled to school at Creagh College in Gorey, Co Wexford, on the bus with her friends. However, this year, just days before the beginning of the new term, she was informed that the bus she had travelled on in previous years was full, and she would not be allowed to board it.
“Her initial reaction was, ‘if I don’t get a space I’m not going to school’,” her mam, Ellen*, recalls.
As one of many Wexford students attending a school which isn’t nearest to her home, Clara is ineligible for a ticket under the strict rules of the School Transport Scheme.
Under the scheme, only students attending their nearest school - which has to be 4.8km away or more - automatically qualify for bus tickets.
All other pupils, including Clara, whose nearest school is Glenart in Co Wicklow, must hope that their local bus isn’t oversubscribed, that there will be ‘concessionary tickets’ available after all those who do fulfil the scheme’s strict criteria have been catered for.
This year, just days before the start of the new school year, Clara’s mother Ellen* was informed that they would not be getting a bus ticket for 2026/27.
“We’ve always been concessionary, every year you don’t know if you’re going to get a ticket until the last minute. You can’t plan ahead,” Ellen says.
“We were only notified we wouldn’t be getting a ticket on the week that school started. Even then you’re still holding out hope that someone will give up their ticket or there’ll be a change in the rules.”
Having lost out in what is effectively a lottery system, Ellen has had to make alternative plans to ensure her daughter gets to school on time every morning.
“It’s a 45-minute round trip with traffic in the mornings. But collecting her takes up to an hour,” she says. “When you’re doing the pickup you have to be there early to get a parking space because there isn’t enough of them.
“You can’t get a bus ticket but if you want to collect them yourself there’s nowhere to park and pick the children up.”
While the personal cost of bringing Clara to and from class every day is one issue, Ellen says that the increased traffic caused by a School Transport Scheme which consistently fails families right across the country is a much broader concern.
“I voted for the Green Party, and I’m disgusted that this isn’t an issue for them or a priority, it seems an easy win for them,” she says. “It’s hard to solve all the public transport problems, but school buses only run twice a day, you’d think it would a simple thing to solve.
“There’s a sense of disbelief that this is still happening, every politician in the country has probably been contacted by someone in relation to this issue over the last 20 years.”
For her part, Clara says she just wants to be able to travel on the bus with her friends every morning and not have to worry about whether her mother can bring her in and collect her.
“It’s an unnecessary worry, you go to school for education you shouldn’t have to think about how you’re going to get there,” she says. “It’s unfair that you have to be a certain distance to qualify for a ticket. Your parents can’t drive you every day, there and back; they have jobs, people need to work.
“Even providing one more bus would prevent all the traffic created by parents having to drive their children to school.”
Sandra Redmond has two daughters attending Gorey Community School and every morning she watches on in frustration as the school bus stops outside her front door, picks up other children, and continues on its way.
Sandra’s situation differs slightly in that her daughters just transferred to Gorey Community School this summer, and, by the time those transfers had been approved, the bus was full.
However, her eldest daughter, who is in fifth year, contests that.
“My friends get on that bus every morning and afternoon, and they have told me that the bus is never full, there’s always spare seats left,” she says. “And yet it’s been marked as full so we can’t get tickets.”
And so, despite the available seats, and despite the bus stopping right outside their front door in Coolgreany, Sandra's daughters endure 12-hour days just so they can attend a school a little over 10km away.
“I’m leaving an hour-and-a-half earlier than normal every morning to bring them in,” says Sandra who works in Gorey. “We’re up at 6.30 a.m. And we don’t get back until 6.05 p.m.”
For the girls, many of those hours are spent waiting for their mother to finish work.
“I don’t finish work until 5.30-6 p.m. and the kids are finished at 3.30 p.m.” Sandra says. “They have to hang around waiting for me. At the start I said, “we’re getting them taxis”, but €25 a day for taxis is a bit out of my budget.
“There are after-school studies, but they don’t suit my children - to get them to stay in school when they don’t need to be is difficult.
“They drop their bag into me, the older girl will go to the library and study, but my younger girl won’t. She might sit in the car and wait for me.
“Once the evenings start closing in and getting dark I don’t like the idea of them walking around town. We have no other option at the moment.”
For now all Sandra can do is hope that spaces will become available next year when her daughter enters her final year in school and begins preparing for her Leaving Cert.
And her daughter is fearful of the impact this situation will have on her studies.
“As a Leaving Cert student this is valuable time I could be using to study and do my homework,” she says. “I know people will say ‘oh, just go to the library’, but I’m the type of person who can’t study in a room full of people, I have to be by myself.
“This is time wasted, hanging around town, when I could be going home, studying and getting all my homework done.”
Gorey councillor Nicky Boland has been representing both families and many others in the Coolgreany, Inch, and Kilanerin area who have fallen foul of the School Transport Scheme’s regulations.
He has written to Education Minister Hildegarde Naughton to highlight these issues and request some flexibility for families whose children don’t attend their nearest school and want to avail of bus tickets.
“What is particularly concerning is that many of these families had school transport places in previous years and are now being told, at very short notice, that there is no capacity available,” he says
“This is completely unacceptable for families who have relied on the scheme and made their working and family arrangements around having access to school transport.
“Parents are now being forced to rearrange work commitments, incur additional travel costs and spend significant amounts of time transporting their children to and from school. For many families in rural areas, there simply is no realistic alternative.
“Access to education should not depend on whether a parent has the ability to provide private transport.”
While he accepts that remodelling the scheme can’t be done overnight, Cllr Boland says the decision-making process is not giving parents enough time to plan for the year ahead.
“Many parents only received notification in late August that transport will not be available. This leaves families with very little time to find alternative arrangements and is causing considerable stress and uncertainty.
“School transport is not a luxury. It is a vital bridge between children and their education. It should never become an obstacle to a child’s ability to attend school, nor should it place an unreasonable financial, logistical or emotional burden on parents.”
Responding to Cllr Boland’s query, Minister Naughton replied, “Please be assured that providing accessible school transport for children is a priority for me in my role as Minister for Education and Youth and for the Minister for Special Education, Minister Moynihan
“I have raised the specific details of your query with the relevant team in the Department for their attention. They are currently reviewing the matter, and you will receive a response shortly.”
*Some names have been changed to protect the identity of the interviewees.