READERS' FORUM:Have your say
Laoise Meek got in touch after a less then pleasant experience travelling on Irish Rail recently. On a journey from Dublin to Cork she was “alarmed to note that despite the implications of the current economic situation on people’s financial conditions, our national rail transport provider is doing their utmost to impose ludicrous financial penalties upon customers”.
Her partner bought two return tickets on the Irish Rail website, a process which, she says, took 45 minutes. “Both of us were perplexed when it transpired that the student rate was €46 and the adult rate was only €40. As we departed Limerick Junction, a ticket inspector arrived and informed me that I was not in possession of the appropriate student travel card and would have to make a further payment of €26 or my ticket would be confiscated and I would face a fine of anything from €100.”
She was taken aback and explained that they had assumed her official student identification card would suffice. “I accepted that I did not have the correct card and if we had missed notification on the matter at the time of booking, we expressed our apologies. She felt the inspector showed a “lack of discretion”.
So the trip ended up costing her €72. “One might be willing to pay this for a relaxing and comfortable journey. However, the seats we had pre-booked online were already occupied when we boarded the train. There were no windows we could open, nor was the air conditioning operational. The heat, coupled with the smell of fast food and various snacks, was rather overpowering. No water was available to purchase from the refreshment cart.” A fellow passenger was allowed to down five cans of beer “and provide an offensive commentary for the duration,” without any Irish Rail staff intervening.
When the couple got back to Dublin, she realised to her horror that she had mislaid the tickets. She eventually located them but not before being “threatened with a further €170 fine per ticket”. She says that she and others “will continue to seriously struggle financially. I would implore all transport bodies to have some understanding of people’s circumstances at this time and to please liberate themselves from this paranoid nature of doing business. Some of us are still honest and have little interest or inclination to cheat the system. In return for this ability to approach problems with a little humanity and compassion, I will endeavour to accept any issues that should arise with their services.”
We contacted Irish Rail and a spokesman said the student travel card required for student fares offered a “wide range of discounts on our intercity and commuter services”. He said that the company also offered “heavily discounted online fares on selected Intercity services for adult fares”. He said when adult fares were available at a lower price, there was nothing to stop students buying them, but the “key difference with the student travel card is that the discounts are available on all services”.
He said that when booking online, the company makes it very clear that people cannot book such a ticket without a fare card. “We have invested heavily in automatic ticket barriers at a large amount of our stations across the network. The reason for this is that we too have to be revenue conscious and are clamping down on fare evasion. It is a customer’s responsibility to ensure they have a valid ticket at all times on their journey, up to and including automatic ticket barriers when exiting the platform having arrived at stations equipped with such barriers.”
Ode to a crisp, a poetic response
A reader got in touch with some harsh words about Tayto’s Bistro crisp range. Well “harsh” may be stretching the point but she seemed quite cross. Claire O’Malley from Co Laois demanded to know what made Tayto’s Bistro crisps actually bistro or gourmet or hand-cooked – all things the bag claims they are. We contacted Mr Tayto – actually Raymond Coyle of Largo Foods, the company that now makes Tayto, to find out more.
He said it would be more accurate to say the crisps were kettle-cooked but they cannot use that name as it is patented by a different company. Several other companies also use hand-cooked as a euphemism for kettle-cooked.
What kettle-cooked means is that the crisps are cooked in batches rather than continuously on a conveyor belt. These “hand-cooked” crisps are cooked for 12 minutes instead of the normal five so they have a harder bite and are more crunchy. Coyle said that they were called gourmet because they cost more to make than normal crisps and he said the term “Bistro” was “poetic licence”.
