Fair enough, the lack of information (and people not familiarising themselves) on how to contact Irish Rail is a big factor. But from where I'm sitting on an ICR right now, there is no information visible. Any information on how to use emergency equipment tends to put a lot of emphasis on penalties for mis-use which would tend to put a lot of people off.
You can't put this down to apathy - several people did ring the guards so it wasn't a question of being passive. For some reason people either didn't know to pull the cord, they didn't feel it worthwhile or they were afraid to. Another possibility is that people thought that it would be better not to alert the driver in case he stopped the train and the guys then tried to do a runner.
The only thing I am blaming Irish Rail for is the failure to provide any form of security on trains and for allowing the situation to persist where low-level anti-social behaviour is allowed to continue unchallenged. This has a tendency to develop into incidents like we've seen this week and ultimately, somebody is going to get seriously injured or killed as a result of it. It is not reasonable to expect a ticket collector to go in and stop a fight but it is reasonable to expect some effort made to keep headbangers off trains and for Irish Rail staff to monitor what is going on and arrange to remove people from trains if they are annoying other passengers. None of this is new - I only ever took the old 1817 train to Longford once, because it was a very scary place to be the only person in a carriage after Maynooth aside from a nutter with a 2-litre of Linden Village.
In terms of defending yourself with a fire extinguisher, you are generally Ok if you used something that was to hand as a weapon so long as you could reasonably be expected to have the item to hand. So if you had a sword, that is not cool but if you used a walking stick, that is Ok.
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