Hundreds of school students on trips abroad from Ireland have been stranded abroad or are still awaiting departure as a result of five days of air traffic restrictions.
The groups include 36 students from Gallen Community School in Co Offaly, who were stuck in Barcelona without flights at the weekend. The students, led by teachers Tom Dunican and Ursula Finnegan, missed a ferry by “about five minutes” this afternoon.
Mr Dunican told The Irish Times from Calais the transition year group left Ireland last Thursday morning for their school trip to Salou and Barcelona.
“We had a great old time and then we were to come back on Sunday night from Barcelona but our flight was cancelled. It all went pear-shaped thanks to the volcano.” However, Mr Dunican said the tour organiser NST had been “brilliant” and had organised everything to help get the group back to Ireland.
“We had some trek. We left Barcelona last night at 7.30pm and we got into Calais at 3pm. We missed our ferry by about five minutes so we’re waiting for the next one, but it looks like we’re going to miss our connection in Holyhead now.
“We had 18 hours on a bus. I don’t recommend it, but in fairness the kids were great. There were no complaints at all – they just took it in their stride. It part of an adventure and it’s part of travel so you might as well just get on with it. I think they’ll be looking forward to seeing their mammies.”
Mr Dunican said everyone had been “living on Pringles and stuff” for the last day or so and they were looking forward to “getting something proper to eat”. The tour organiser had given the students an allowance of €40 per head to cover expenses.
The teacher said it was his fifth year to bring transition years on tour and nothing similar had ever happened before.
NST said 10 of its student tour groups – about 400 students – are currently trying to return to Ireland.
In addition, over 30 groups (more than 1,000 students) had endured “significant disruption” to their travel arrangements as they were unable to leave Ireland due to the current situation.
“NST is vigorously working with a number of accommodation, coach and ferry companies across Europe to ensure the speedy and safe return of all of our groups,” it said in a statement.
Adrienne O’Hara, commercial director of the tour firm said: “To monitor the situation and provide the best possible support to affected groups, an incident team staffed by NST staff members has been working tirelessly throughout the last five days to exhaust all options to minimise the implications of the volcanic ash on NST school tours that are stuck abroad or those school groups that are waiting to depart Ireland.”
She said the priority was to get all school groups home as soon as possible while also ensuring that appropriate alternative arrangements were made for all other school tours that are due to travel in the coming days and weeks.