A new information campaign aimed at informing students and parents about the laws governing the use of seat-belts on school buses, is to be launched tomorrow by the Department of Education.
The campaign, which is being launched in advance of the start of the new school term, will include cinema, radio and television advertisements, in addition to a DVD which will be sent to schools countrywide.
Brian Farrell, a spokesman for the Road Safety Authority, welcomed the campaign as an important and timely development.
"We advised the Department of Education when they were developing the strategy and we are delighted with the outcome," he said.
The Department of Education initiative follows last year's announcement of €36.5 million to ensure that each of the estimated 138,000 students who use the school transport system funded by the department will have their own seat and seat-belts by December 2006.
To date, more than 85 per cent of Bus Éireann's fleet of school buses, equating to 580 buses, have been retrofitted with seat-belts.
The remaining buses are to be fitted with seat-belts before the December deadline in compliance with an EU directive requiring their use in all school buses.
Information campaigns and increased Government investment follows the deaths of five teenage girls in a school bus crash in Navan in May 2005. The bus had no seat-belts.