The more free-flowing traffic in the town over the holidays lends weight to recent calls by local councillors for free school transport to be extended by the Education Authority to all children, no matter where they live, in a bid to reduce gridlock in the town. 

The call was made at the April meeting of Fermanagh and Omagh District Council, where Cllr Alex Baird suggested that providing free transport to all school children could help alleviate the problem. 

“I’ve seen parents with one child who are having to drop them off to school and pick them up,” said Cllr Baird.

Cllr Thomas O’Reilly went further, urging councillors to push for a change in the legislation, which currently states only children who lived more than two miles from a primary school and three miles from a secondary school could avail of free transport. 

“Whatever about urban areas, where there are footpaths and so on, it’s absolutely scandalous to have children walking on country roads,” added Cllr O’Reilly, stating costs should not override “a young person being killed by being forced to walk on country roads” and that there should “be some sense of equality between rural and urban areas.”

The members agreed with the concept of having a collective effort to have the two-mile rule reviewed, and the motion to set up a sub-committee  to deal with the issue was passed. 

At the same meeting, it was also agreed that the Council write to Transport NI demanding a solution to the over-all traffic troubles in Enniskillen.

Cllr Baird said: “Enniskillen is an island town and the traffic congestion has been happening at the same time each day, usually in the morning and evening, but especially on a Friday afternoon.”

Cllr Barry Doherty said Transport NI had failed in their promise that road works, which were responsible for some recent gridlock, would never again cause the chaos of years passed. 

“It took me 45 minutes to get from the roundabout at Donnelly’s to get to Rooney’s, and we ended up having to turn around,” he said of his own recent experience of congestion in the town.