The location of the Traincare Depot in Portlaoise may in part be due to local political pressure. But it was spurred on partly by the need to free up some land in Inchicore for Dart Underground access. However in my opinion the real killer was the plan to make vast profits for Irish Rail and/or developers by using the Inchicore site for housing and office development. Also land near the railway in the Dublin area was horrifically expensive, so Portlaoise seemed a comparatively good choice at the time.
The true ongoing costs of running trains to the Portlaoise depot must be far more than the cost just of running the hourly service to Portlaoise station.
So we are left with yet another expensive legacy of the Celtic Tiger years and the truly demented property market in the years prior to 2008.
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