As thousands inconvenienced, Irish Rail has questions to answer
Issued : Friday 12 March, 2010
Statement by Dominic Hannigan TD
With thousands of commuters and members of the travelling public delayed and inconvenienced today Irish Rail has serious questions to answer.
The problems experienced by Irish Rail may not have been a complete systems melt down, but they came pretty close.
Barry Kenny of Irish rail said this morning that the problem was related to maintenance work that was being carried out on the system over night. It's not at all clear why the maintenance was being done at a time when there was a risk that significant numbers of commuters might be inconvenienced.
According to Irish Rail's twitter page, there have been signalling problems seriously affecting the network since Wednesday and we need to be told if these are related to today's systematic breakdown.
If this maintenance was scheduled, why was it not carried out, say over a weekend when the potential for problems would have been minimised.
I welcome the fact that Dublin Bus agreed to honour train tickets for inconvenienced passengers in North County Dublin, but I wonder why the same courtesy was not extended to people in Louth Meath, Kildare and other areas. Surely if the arrangement can be put in place with Dublin Bus, it can be put in place with Bus Eireann.
It would seem that the company's contingency management systems are either not functioning or are non-existent. I will be pursuing these issues with Irish Rail management.
