Sir, - Last Sunday, I arrived an hour early for the last train from Cork to Dublin to find there was already a 200-yard queue of people ahead of me. The other two trains that day had gone early on Sunday morning but as Iarnrod Eireann's practice during the present strike is to wait to announce details of each day's service until the night before (in this case, a Saturday night), most people would not have known about these two trains until they were well on their way to Dublin. Thus all those people - mostly young - who had gone home for the weekend now had to attempt to cram into this one train to get back in time to their Dublin-based jobs.
I have no doubt similar scenes were enacted at the same time in Tralee, Killarney, Mallow, Westport, etc. And on that very day, all the main newspapers were leading with the story that the same Government that has done absolutely nothing to end this rail dispute was building a "multi-billion metro system for Dublin".
Let there be no doubt about where this Government's priorities lie. Perhaps now, when the rail strike has begun to disrupt Dublin, some effort will be made to resolve it. - Yours, etc.,
Ronan Geary, Lindsay House, Patrick Street, Christchurch, Dublin 8.