"Weakness" in popular scheme highlighted

Councillors in the Claremorris-Swinford Municipal District have highlighted a “weakness” in the application process for the Safe Routes to School scheme (SRTS).

SRTS is designed to encourage as many pupils and students as possible in primary and post-primary schools to use Active Travel to get to and from school. The programme was launched in 2021 and an Expression of Interest letter was sent to all schools in Ireland.

A SRTS scheme for Cong National School was discussed at last week’s meeting of the Claremorris-Swinford MD where Cllr Alma Gallagher said it was ‘not encouraging’ that 51 schools in Mayo have applied for the scheme and will have to be dealt with before any other school that applies in the county.

Currently, 65 schools in 31 local authorities have had works completed with 146 having had outline delivery plans prepared.

“There are 51 schools in the system and that is now a closed shop,” she said.

Cllr Neil Cruise said it was a clear weakness in the SRTS scheme that schools were left to apply for the programme by themselves.

“School principals don’t have a minute from the beginning of the day to the end to send in an application and leaving it up to them, there’s a weakness in that.”

“Around the table at MD level, we would all have so much knowledge of what would be a good scheme and where.”

“I’m not dissing principals but there is engineering logic around this table,” he said.