Probe into racism on city buses

Bus Éireann has launched an investigation into alleged racist behaviour by one of its drivers towards nine passengers who are asylum seekers living in Direct Provision.

The semi-state bus company has also confirmed to the Galway City Tribune that it has apologised to the passengers, which included eight schoolchildren, and has offered a refund. The incident under investigation took place after school one afternoon in the city last week.

A mother – who wishes to remain anonymous but believed to be African – said she and her five-year-old son, and seven other children living in the Eglinton Direct Provision centre, suffered “unacceptable treatment” from a Bus Éireann driver as they boarded a bus to take them home.

As they got on the bus to Salthill, the eight children presented their Bus Éireann-issued bus passes, which had been valid for travel since the beginning of the school year in September.

“The bus driver didn’t even look at the passes and said, ‘get off the bus, those passes are not for this bus’,” according to the mother.

She explained that the bus passes were valid until June 2018, but she said the bus driver “repeated his statement and ordered them to get off the bus”.

When the mother refused to get off, and told the children to take their seats on the bus, she said the driver went to ‘shush’ her and she asked him not to.

She said the driver told her she was wasting his time. “He then made a racial remark and he said to me ‘in your country, you wouldn’t have done this’. I asked him ‘what has this got to do with my country?’ He didn’t reply,” she recalled.

When the bus arrived at their destination in Salthill, she went back to the driver and said: “If you have a problem with passengers from different countries then you shouldn’t be working for public transport.”

The driver is said to have replied: “You don’t come to my country and tell me what to do.” The mother said she took out her phone, took a photograph of the driver and told him she was going to report him. She said the driver told her the Garda station was around the corner, and he encouraged her to report him.

This is not the full version of this article; to read more, see this week’s Galway City Tribune.