READ MORE:\u00a0PICTURE: Popular Tipperary daycare take advantage of sunny weather with teddy bear picnic!<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cThe situation is made worse by the reliance on the concessionary tickets system.<\/p>\n
\u201cParents often don\u2019t find out until very close to the start of the school year whether their child has secured a seat.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they are not successful, it leaves them scrambling at the last minute with no transport options. This is simply not sustainable and must change.<\/p>\n
\u201cBus \u00c9ireann must be commended for working hard to ensure, where possible, every child is accommodated. However, they are working with restricted guidelines and limited resources within the network.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe nonsense must stop whereby we do not allow over 70\u2019s to continue to drive school bus routes. We are fast approaching the stage where children will not be collected for school because of a lack of drivers.<\/p>\n
\u201cMinister it should be noted that bus operators rely on international recruitment to keep their fleet on the road.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe current Work Permits system is too rigid and needs to be flexible to respond to demand.<\/p>\n
\u201cMinister when will the commitment to the programme for Government commence to review school transport. This review should look at integrating with Local Link services, which already operate in many areas to create more flexible solutions for families.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe review should also consider moving the allocation of bus tickets to an earlier point in the year, closer to the time of school enrolment, so that both Bus \u00c9ireann and parents have more certainty and more time to plan ahead.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe issue of school transport is a reoccurring issue that must be dealt with in a expeditious and fair manner, I hope that the review will be conducted in a timely manner and make recommendations to make the system fair, equal and more accessible,\u201d Deputy Lowry concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The school transport system in Ireland is outdated and not fit for purpose, according to Deputy Michael Lowry.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42218,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,31678,43,836,9123],"class_list":{"0":"post-42217","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-michael-lowry","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-schools","13":"tag-tipperary"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42217","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=42217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}