Irish Rail timetable reliability
A Senator complained that Irish Rail's revised timetables had made commuter services unreliable and urged action for affected commuters. The Chair reminded Members of speaking limits.
I mark International Day of the Girl and welcome all the girls in the Gallery. It is appropriate that it is nearly all girls who are here. My issue has been raised by a female constituent, though not alone as many others have raised it too. On 3 September Iarnród Éireann decided to change its timetables and since then has become utterly unreliable. It used to be a service by which one could set a clock and we were very proud of our commuter train service, but in the past month it has been reliable in only one aspect, which is that it is continually late. This is causing commuters from Balbriggan, Skerries, Rush, Lusk and Donabate to miss meetings in town and children to have to wait until late to be picked up from their crèches.
It is a cause of great anger to people living in Fingal that they pay their taxes and fares which are more expensive than DART fares, yet they are late. One ludicrous excuse I was given was that it was because of leaves on the line. We are very proud of our parks, trees and countryside in Fingal, but we are pretty certain there are trees and parks on the south side of the city too and we do not see any problem there or on the west side. I was asked to raise this issue by my constituents and Councillor Tom O'Leary who has also received numerous emails. The problem is caused by congestion on the line with DART trains and the fact that the commuter train is not given precedence, which means that people are regularly ten or 11 minutes late. That means a 30-minute journey becomes a 40-minute or a 41-minute journey, which represents a 33% increase in the time of travel. It makes making connections in town unreliable and means that it is difficult to make commitments.
We have a huge number of people who want to use public transport who do serious business. We have people working in Google, solicitors, barristers and all kinds of businesspeople and others who have commitments in town. They cannot make plans because the trains have become utterly unreliable since 3 September.
I urge the Leader to ask the Minister to contact Iarnród Éireann to find out what the problem is. If the Minister cannot have the matter corrected, he needs to come into this House, take his portfolio and responsibilities seriously and explain to us why commuters in Dublin north, Fingal, are being discommoded in this fashion.
