Primary school children in Cork have been made to cross three lanes of traffic to get to school each morning.
The children must undertake the precarious crossing after they were denied school bus access, according to parents of children at Douglas Rochestown Educate Together National School.
The route to school they were advised to take instead, leads them across the N28 and multiple lanes of high-speed traffic, with cars travelling at speeds of 100km/h, CorkBeo reports.
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Douglas Rochestown ETNS moved to the new campus on January 13 of this year and parents contacted Bus Eireann to questioned their children's access to the bus service.
The company uses an automatic system to determine the most traversable route and if the family home is within 3.2km the children do not qualify for school transport.
According to parents, this was the alternative walking route presented to them by Bus Eireann for more than 50 primary school kids living near Mount Oval.
The directions given by Bus Eireann lead down a pathway that isn't legally accessible by car so the only way kids would be able to get to school by this route would be walking it.
A video put together by one concerned parent, Dr John Collier, documents the path the children are expected to take. The route shown would have the kids walking past an active construction site before following the N28 by Carr's Hill - which they would later have to cross over.
Once off the N28, they would then have to walk down a narrow road with next to no footpaths and several sharp bends that have low visibility before finally arriving at the school gates.
Dr Collier told CorkBeo: "I was shocked as we always assumed we would be getting a place on the bus. We are 5.2km using the shortest route up Garryduff, down Maryborough Hill and across to the school through Maryborough Woods.
"Their system automatically calculates the traversable route based on the postcodes of the house. When we questioned the route with Bus Eireann and said that we could not drive it, they responded by saying that the traversable route is walkable. It does not need to be traversed by car or bus.
"My daughter is in 3rd class. They all love the new school but she has asked me on numerous occasions why she can’t get the bus with her friends even though they live closer to the school than we do! As a group of parents, we were frustrated as that bus passes our estate every morning to pick up kids from other estates along the same route."
Cork South-Central TD, Donnchadh Ó'Laoghaire raised the issue with the Minister for Education during the week. Mr Ó'Laoghaire pointed out there was no safe and legal way to comply with the route provided by Bus Eireann.
He said: "The rule states that in order to be eligible for the scheme, pupils must live more than 3.2 km from the school via a traversable route. The Department and Bus Éireann reverted with a diagram showing a traversable route that is not accessible by foot, bike or car in any legal or safe manner.
"It requires cars to go out the wrong way onto a slip road leading to what will soon be a motorway but is currently a national primary road. It just cannot be done.
"I understand that in some emails to parents, the Department has suggested “traversable” does not need to be traversable in practice. It stated it had calculated that it was not required to take into account a one-way road system or whether the route is traversable by bus, and that the measurement was merely one of the shortest route available.
"If this is the policy, that is a bit daft."
Frustrated by the lack of movement on the issue, Dr John Collier launched a petition urging Bus Eireann to engage with parents.
Almost 500 signatories have put their names to the petition, with one writing: "Walking that route an ambulance would need to be on standby each morning and for the walk home"
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