The Government is to spend an extra €36.5 million in the coming year to ensure that each of the estimated 138,000 students who use the school transport system will have their own seat and seat belts by December 2006.
Announcing the move at the Department of Education offices in Dublin yesterday, Minister for Education Mary Hanafin acknowledged that last May's school bus crash near Navan, in which five schoolgirls died, had "focused the mind" on the issue.
The decision to introduce the new measures, taken at a Cabinet meeting earlier this week, requires an initial one-off capital investment of €25 million, plus an additional €11.5 million in funding per year.
It will mean the current "three for two" seating arrangement - whereby three students are forced to share two adult seats - will end for all second-level students by the beginning of the new school year.
However, primary pupils will not be guaranteed an individual seat with seat belt until the new system is fully operational by December 2006. Ms Hanafin said this was partly due to the need to allow private operators the opportunity to fit existing buses with approved seat belts, as well as to provide lead-in time to acquire the extra buses.
"It cannot be done more quickly," she said.
Parents and student representatives welcomed the announcement, but expressed regret that it had taken a fatal crash to turn the plan into a reality. Eleanor Petrie of the National Parents' Council said the employment of staff to supervise children on school buses was an "imperative".