In theory the IE system lets you book to within 1 minute of departure, they can't guarantee your name over the seat below 1 hour though it appears that if your ticket says C33 even without the card in the seat it is yours, however legally the guard cannot evict its occupant since no notice was given that the seat was reserved. In this context great care is warrented with e ticketing systems to make sure they can stand up to the real world
The reservation cards have to be printed and manually inserted current which takes time, the 1 hour window can be drastically reduced on the new Cork Dublin trains since it can download the seat reservation list itself by wifi but that must be done before anyone else can board and people don't like being left in a queue next to a empty train
If you apply a compulsory reservations policy then everyone has a seat and you can dispense with seat reservation cards but that wouldn't work in Ireland since the idea of booking in advance is a completely foreign concept and that there is an assumption that regardless of the event/day etc that a god given right exists for a seat even if you board with 1 minute to go
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