A technical error in Bus Éireann’s ticket system has resulted in thousands of children not having their bus tickets on time for the first day of school.
The company was forced to send out 16,300 temporary tickets via email yesterday after the extent of the delay became clear.
Even with the temporary tickets issued, over 6,000 students still have not been issued with a ticket, leading over 1000 people to call Bus Éireann’s emergency helpline.
Bus Éireann issued a statement defending their handling of the issue.
"To allay any concerns for the minority of parents who have not yet received these in the post, the company has decided to issue temporary email tickets to any families whose tickets have been processed since Wednesday, August 20," the statement said.
"Bus Éireann will also accept receipt of payment or email confirmation from anyone who paid before the deadline of August 1 last," it added.
"There were some technical glitches with the new system that were promptly rectified and we extended the payment dateline by one week earlier this month, to alleviate any inconvenience this may have caused.”
This was the first year that the year-long tickets were only available online, rather than local offices.
Bus Éireann have said they will be reviewing their new system once all tickets have been issued.
"It does need a bit of fine-tuning and we're going to work on that to make it extremely user-friendly,” a Bus Éireann spokesperson said.
“This was the first year of it. We are going to review the system and have an audit and make sure it's fully accessible. It's working at the moment. If we need to make any improvements to it, we will.”
