Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said last night that the three-for-two policy on seating in school buses would have to end.
However, Mr Ahern said that only 14 per cent of the 128,000 children travelling in school buses were in a three-for-two situation and he said that retro-fitting seatbelts on the existing CIE fleet would be difficult. Instead, Mr Ahern said that as the fleet is replaced, new buses would have seatbelts.
Speaking on last night's Late Late Show, he said: "People would want to know as quickly as we can, [that] we can move to a situation where our children are travelling as safely as possible," he said. "I can't say we are going to get there on the first of September."
Mr Ahern was speaking at the end of a week in which 11 people were killed in road accidents. The deaths brought the number of fatalities so far this year to 157, 13 more than for the same period last year. This tally takes into account last Monday's bus crash in Co Meath. The number of road fatalities so far in May is 35, which is already nine more than for the entire month in 2004.
On Thursday a 19-year-old man was arrested, accused of failing to stop at the scene of a fatal collision in Tallaght, Dublin, where a 15-year-old female pedestrian was killed. According to gardaí she was struck by a motorcycle as she crossed the Cheeverstown Road at around 3.50pm.
The driver of the motorcycle did not stop at the scene. A man was arrested shortly before 7pm after a follow-up search by the Garda Air Support Unit and the Garda Dog Unit.