Research into the safety standards on Irish buses reveal extremely poor results

Alarming.

More than half of all the buses that were recently inspected by the Road Safety Authority in the past year have failed safety tests, as reported by This Week on RTÉ.

The inspection involved 873 buses that were examined over an entire year, starting in June 2017. Of these, over half (445) failed to comply with the required safety standards. 268 buses were also found with major defects, while 37 had dangerous defects.

Fianna Fáil’s transport spokesman Robert Troy has written to the Transport Minister Shane Ross asking him to instruct Bus Éireann to immediately carry out an audit of buses to ensure that they are road worthy.

“I’ve requested him to ask Bus Éireann to immediately carry out an audit to ensure that every vehicle that’s currently contracted to Bus Éireann has road worthy vehicle certification and secondly to ask the RSA why they are not prosecuting contractors who are known to be breaking the law," said Troy.

Liz O’Donnell, chairperson of the RSA, has also sent a letter to Bus Éireann which expresses their concerns about the road worthiness of school buses that are operated under the School Transport Scheme.