IARNRÓD ÉIREANN has defended its decision not to run any services yesterday. It said a dramatic curtailment of all rail services until January 3rd was down to economic constraints and an absence of demand.
However, a leading rail users’ lobby group said the company’s service was inadequate, insisting that the earlier start to many winter sales meant there was demand for certain services, but this was being ignored.
Irish Rail shut its intercity, Dart, and commuter services on Christmas Eve and ran no trains until this morning. It will run only a limited weekend service on commuter and Dart lines until January 3rd.
Mark Gleeson of Rail Users Ireland said rail users needed a more regular service in the post-Christmas period.
While “there may not have been a demand for an inter-city service, there were still people on the move, travelling in and out of Dublin and Cork in particular for the winter sales, and they were given no choice but to take their cars.
“Times have changed and there are more people out and about on St Stephen’s Day,” Mr Gleeson said.
“I don’t think anyone would expect the company to be running a service at 10pm on St Stephen’s Day, but there should be some services running into Cork and Dublin from commuter towns.”
He said the reduced service was an inevitable consequence of a cutback in funding to the rail network which meant that over the Christmas period, Irish Rail was failing to meet the needs of would-be passengers.
Irish Rail spokeswoman Jane Cregan said the company had been lobbied by retailers to introduce services on St Stephen’s Day but that following research carried out last year on the numbers using the State’s bus service on St Stephen’s Day, it could not justify running any trains on December 26th.
“We have to manage our costs carefully,” she said. “We have falling passenger numbers and a reduced State subvention, so we have to be prudent with the decisions we make.
“The research we have carried out shows that it just would not make economic sense for us to run more trains.”
A similar timetabling dispute has erupted in Britain, where passenger groups, rail experts and opposition politicians have condemned the British government for failing to deliver on pre-election promises to end the Christmas shut-down across the rail network there.
"It's almost a three-day shut-down," Philip Haigh, business editor of Railmagazine said. "Local services should be running – on Boxing Day at the very least.
“It used to happen 30 or 40 years ago, but then the whole country used to work a lot harder over the Christmas period.”
