{"id":381961,"date":"2026-04-04T17:27:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T17:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/381961\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T17:27:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T17:27:08","slug":"school-bus-operators-under-pressure-as-fuel-costs-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/381961\/","title":{"rendered":"School bus operators under pressure as fuel costs rise"},"content":{"rendered":"

A family-owned bus coach and hire company that operates school routes in Ireland has said that rising fuel costs could cause disruption across the industry.<\/p>\n

Dublin-based Nolan Coaches has a fleet of 75 vehicles, and it operates 35 school runs for the Department of Education.<\/p>\n

Its CEO Garrett O’Toole said that at the moment, the company is looking at an extra \u20ac250,000 in fuel costs a year, and that figure could go higher.<\/p>\n

“It’s \u20ac250,000 at the moment, but it could be \u20ac300,000 [extra] next week. Every day you’re calculating the costs, it’s not sustainable at the moment.”<\/p>\n

He warned that other operators as facing the same pressure, and that it could prove “unsustainable” for many of them.<\/p>\n

He said that Nolan Coaches would be “breaking even” on school services if the current prices stay how they are.<\/p>\n

“But if they go up further there is going to be a cost not just for Nolan Coaches, but every operator throughout the country – they are going to start looking at these services and potentially start dropping them.<\/p>\n

“I’ve been speaking to operators throughout Ireland over the last couple of weeks and they’re ready to park their buses up and not send them out on school services.”<\/p>\n

Mr O’Toole said there has been some engagement with the Department of Transport.<\/p>\n

\"Garrett
\nNolan Coaches operates 35 school routes in Ireland<\/p>\n

He welcomed the increased fuel rebate and 20 cent reduction, but said it won’t be enough.<\/p>\n

“We can’t get the VAT back on diesel, unlike hauliers, so that’s another cost.”<\/p>\n

Mr O’Toole called for a further increase in fuel rebate, which went up from 7.5c per litre to 12c recently.<\/p>\n

He said it needs to go up to 34c and that fuel variances need to be included in public contracts to operate buses.<\/p>\n

“We just can’t keep swallowing the costs,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A family-owned bus coach and hire company that operates school routes in Ireland has said that rising fuel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-381961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}