[Letter] Don't trust what Irish Rail say

[Mark Gleeson]

In recent weeks Barry Kenny has answered a raft of questions in the Irish Independent but has avoided some important facts

Question 1 is why are people writting to the Indo surely IE are meant to answer post emails etc ?

Dear Sir,

Mr Kenny of Iarnród Éireann in his response to recent letters (April 24) is somewhat economical with the truth.

Punctuality standards for suburban trains in Ireland classify a train on time if it is no more than 10 minutes late, while elsewhere including Northern Ireland 5 minutes is the standard, if Iarnród Éireann fails to make the targets set there is no provision to refund or discount the fares of weekly, monthly or annual ticket holders as there is in the UK and Northern Ireland.

Mr Gallagher (April 8) is quite correct to pose the question of incompetence with respect to the provision of 8 coach DART's, there is in fact a 4 coach DART in service in the evening peak.

What Mr Kenny omitted in his response was that the continued shortage of 8 coach DART's is in part due the now 10 month delay in the 60 million euro DART refurbishment project. The date having been revised by Mr Kenny and his colleagues from the initial June 2005 to September then November then February, it is almost May and still no sign. The first batch of coaches left in December 2004 and a total of 20 (out of 76) have so far travelled to Leipzig and then onwards to Siemens in Prague.

Ms Early (April 15th) is quite correct to inquire about additional services from Sligo as currently there exists only one intercity service to Sligo per week (Friday 15:55) and one to Dublin (Sunday 15:45) all other services are operated by commuter trains ill suited to the 3 hour 5 minute journey. Despite new track and new signalling journey times increased between Dublin and Sligo by 7 minutes last year. All the hype Iarnród Éireann has placed on the new timetable is misplaced, there may be more trains but they are significantly less comfortable than those they replaced and the key measure, the daily number of seats has only increased by a fraction. Iarnród Éireann have steadfastly refused to admit that they have got it very badly wrong with respect to Dublin Sligo.

The most shocking indictment of all is why so many members of the public feel they must write to local and national newspapers with rail service queries and complaints, is it because it is Iarnród Éireann policy not to respond to email complaints, the failure to respond to many written queries or is it that those lucky enough to receive written responses may be left waiting up to 8 weeks?

Yours Sincerely

Mark Gleeson
Platform 11 Ireland's National Rail Users Organisation

http://www.unison.ie/irish_independe...issue_id=13974