A Wexford father has expressed his deep frustration over the lack of school transport for his wheelchair bound daughter
About to enter her fourth year into secondary school without ever having school transport, Gavin Tracy said he is making a 100KM round trip each day just to transport his daughter Lauren to and from school.
Lauren attends the Loreto School in Wexford despite living in Enniscorthy as her parents say it is the most accessible and suitable school for her based on her needs.
Mr Tracy said, “I suppose our issue is a little bit more complex than what we’ve experienced previously. Our younger daughter who has now gone into transition year, so this is her fourth year going to secondary school with no bus. But unfortunately, we have the extra pressure that she’s wheelchair bound. So we’re not getting anywhere, we still haven’t got a bus, we’ve never had a bus and it’s getting extremely frustrating. The fact that two parents are working, we’re trying to juggle getting her to school, collect her from school, we have to go to work. So I’m doing 100 kilometer trips every day just for the school run and it’s just getting so frustrating and nobody seems to be listening”
He continued, “So we’re traveling from the Enniscorthy district into Loreto Wexford, so it’s from where we’re living, it’s 25 kilometers each way. So a round trip, you’re going in, dropping in and out of school, coming home, getting yourself ready for work or possibly sometimes going directly to work from school. You know we have to sit down every Sunday and work out who’s doing what and I work shift work, so my hours are constantly changing, so we need to sit down every week and work it all out.”
“If my wife has to drop her to school before she goes to work, she has to go a completely different route, she has to leave earlier. Sometimes Lauren has to be dropped at the school at 8am, so she’s in school an hour early because if we don’t do that, we can’t get her in. And she has the extra difficulty of being in the wheelchair, so it’s just an extra added stress and pressure on the family unit outside of all the difficulties we already have with Lauren.”
Mr Tracy said he has written to Paul Kehoe who in turn wrote to the Minister of Education Norma Foley who wrote back & Gavin said, “She has written back, her reply was, you need to go back and speak to the school transport section in Bus Eireann”
Gavin said, ” We went to them, they said, well, she’s not going to her catchment school, but when she was going to her catchment school, they still didn’t offer a bus. So it’s just a fob off, as far as we’re concerned.”
Mr Tracy said it is not fair on his daughter she just wants to go on the bus with her friends like everybody else. He believes she is being isolated.
He added, “Well, I mean, just to add to the frustration, you know, I’m sure many listeners have read in the news that the government have spent €300,000 on a bike shelter, I mean, they’re just rubbing this in people’s noses that, you know, we can’t get our children to school, but we can spend €300,000 on a bus shelter for 18 bicycles outside of Leinster House. Where are the priorities?”
