AROUND 50 PUPILS attending a Co Cork National School have to walk down a busy stretch of the N28 to get to school making parents concerned for their safety.
Douglas Rochestown Educate Together National School moved to a new building on Carr’s Hill on 23 January of this year.
However, pupils who live in Mount Oval and Fort Hill areas of Rochestown currently have to walk a route to school that parents describe as “non-traversable”.
One of the fathers, Dr John Collier, told The Journal that these pupils have to walk a path that requires them to go “the wrong way down the slip road from the N28” and also to “illegally cross three lanes of traffic”.
He added that parents “deem this road to be non-traversable as you cannot drive, cycle or walk this route either safely or illegally”.
“I was shocked as we always assumed we would be getting a place on the bus,” said Collier.
“We are 5.2km using the shortest route. Instead, the Bus Éireann system mapped out a route that involved going down a one-way round in the wrong direction, taking an illegal left onto the N28 south bound and after 1 km taking an illegal right across three lanes of traffic to the slip road from Carrigaline to Douglas.”
Bus Éireann, which is responsible for the planning and timetabling of school transport routes, uses an automatic system to determine the most traversable route.
If a pupil’s home is within 3.2km, they do not qualify for school transport.
Collier added that the school was “built without parking as it wants to rely less on private cars but now there are 30 cars travelling to and from the school every day”.
He and other parents have called on Bus Éireann and the Department to “acknowledge that the route is not traversable”.
Collier also made a video to highlight the route suggested by Bus Éireann.
He added that parents are “frustrated with the lack of any response from the Department of Education or Bus Eireann on this issue”.
“We were denied a bus service for our children to get to school where others living in our locality were able to avail of that service,” said Collier.
“We were denied as a result of a nonsensical route that is illegal by vehicle and extremely dangerous by foot. It is our responsibility as parents to make sure our kids get to school safely.
“We were the people contacting the relevant authorities. To date we still have not had any communication back from them.”
In response to a request from The Journal, a spokesperson from the Department of Education said that Bus Éireann is responsible for “the planning and timetabling of school transport routes on behalf of the Department”.
They described this as a “significant operation” that cost over €333 million last year and added: “Bus Éireann endeavours, within available resources, to ensure that each eligible child has a reasonable level of school transport service in the context of the Scheme nationally.”
The spokesperson noted that in the current school year “over 147,900 children are transported on a daily basis to primary and post-primary schools throughout the country”.
They said this includes over 18,000 children with special educational needs, as well as over 4,200 children who have arrived to Ireland from Ukraine.
The Department spokesperson explained that “children are eligible for transport at primary level where they reside not less than 3.2 kilometres from and are attending their nearest national school”.
This distance measures the shortest traversable route from a child’s home to the relevant school, and the Department spokesperson said this route may be a pedestrian, cycling or vehicular route.
The spokesperson confirmed that the “recently-opened Douglas Rochestown ETNS route is being reviewed following discussions with the Department of Education”.
While work on this review was “impacted somewhat by the current conflict in Ukraine”, alongside increased demand for the scheme last summer due to fees being waived, the spokesperson said families will be contacted directly when the review is complete.
“Department officials are working to complete phase 3 of the review within the coming weeks with recommendations on the future operation of the Department’s School Transport Scheme,” said the Department spokesperson.
Meanwhile, a Bus Éireann spokesperson said that “safety is our first priority” on the more than 8,000 school transport routes it is responsible for planning.
They added: “The system of determining the distance of the shortest traversable route under the terms of the scheme is applied nationally.
“This computerised system primarily measures the route distance and does not take into account any one mode of transport. It takes this approach because otherwise distances could vary on the route to and from the school.
“The route to the recently-opened Douglas Rochestown Educate National School is being reviewed following discussions with the Department of Education.”
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