Public transport: getting to school and back

Sir, – Our son has a 22km daily round-trip to his Dublin school meaning upwards of 45 minutes in a car every day. As he is approaching sixth class, we are keen for him to start to use public transport and escape the car. Unfortunately, there is no public transport or cycling infrastructure so we tried to access the school transport scheme, but to no avail. We were advised that we were not eligible because we did not choose the closest school of our ethos, rather the seventh. Imagine our surprise that all these years we had been driving past six schools that we could have attended. Of those six, three had not been built when my child was enrolled in school, two don’t enrol children past third class, one is in a different county and two had been oversubscribed and we had not been offered a place – a very common occurrence with multidenominational schools. Attempts to engage further with the school transport scheme to point out the very obvious errors in the application process were futile and we were told that we may get a concessionary place, ie, if there are any left over. By my very rough calculations, we do drive past six schools that are closer. All are denominational (five Roman Catholic and one Church of Ireland). At the time my son was enrolling in school all could have discriminated against my son due to the lack of a baptismal certificate. So we have no option but to continue to drive to school. Attempts to engage the Minister for Transport on this transport issue were rebuffed as matters relating to school transport are a matter for the Minister for Education. Imagine that. We did not choose to attend the furthest school we could.We did not choose to clog up the roads alongside other parents trying to get their child to school, before assaulting the traffic further into the office. We did not choose to attend a school far outside our community. It was the best of our options and we would far prefer our son to attend a school that welcomes him in his community. The next best option would be to continue to take the daily trek on a form of public transport, but alas. Back to the car for now at least. – Yours, etc,

SARAH LENNON,

Shankill,

Dublin 18.