A Labour deputy has claimed that somebody was going to be seriously injured or killed because of the "serious and dangerous" overcrowding on the DART rail network.
Mr Tommy Broughan (Lab, Dublin North East) said passengers were being treated "worse than animals".
He blamed the Government's "deplorable lack of investment" in the DART network for the ongoing chaos, a claim rejected by Minister of State Ms Mary Hanafin, who was speaking for the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke.
Ms Hanafin said the DART was being operated within its design capability and "the company assures me this practice is safe".
There will be 90 carriages on the service next month. A further 16 will be in place next year and an extra 12 by summer 2003 which would increase total passenger capacity from 14,000 in September to 20,650 by 2003.