Some students in Carlow and Kilkenny who are without a seat on a school bus may soon see that rectified.
Last year 103,000 availed of the transport and this year with free buses declared as a cost of living measure that rose to 125,400.
Already, it’s an annual lottery for a number of local children on concessionary tickets who are not typically eligible for regular passes – see here. But demand for these alone was up by a third this year intensifying the situation and resulting in some who’d previously been accommodated, left without.
However, we revealed on Wednesday that good news is due with Deputies John Paul Phelan and John McGuinness saying they’d been told by the Education Minister that funding had been made available in the Budget.
Now, Norma Foley’s confirmed it to KCLR News when she attended the Education and Training Board of Ireland conference at Mount Wolseley in Tullow, saying “So I have secured additional funding in the Budget, we will be ensuring that our first priority will be those who applied on time and who were in receipt of a concessionary ticket last year, they will be our first priority”.
She adds “After that, I suppose in fairness, that will lead to other additionality as well but I am happy that we have received that additional funding for those who did not meet the criteria but did in the past avail of concessionary tickets and applied on time”.
