The basic problem in enforcing reservations is the lack of any customer service presence on most of Irish Rail's services compounded by the erratic display of reservations.
A simple approach which might be the use of prominent notices on the entrance to each coach with reserved seating reading "You are not entitled to occupy a seat in this carriage unless you are in possession of a valid seat reservation for this service. Passengers occupying a seat in this carriage without a reservation will be deemed to be travelling without a valid ticket". This would need to be accompanied by an enforcement campaign and might not be overly popular - headlines such as "Pensioner with heart condition and two broken legs forced to crawl along train floor by heartless rail official !".
Requiring passengers with reservations to occupy seats 20 minutes in advance of departure (is this not the current rule ?) is a cop-out - the very attraction of reserving a seat is that it is reserved.
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