A new rail safety board will be set up shortly, the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, told SIPTU's biennial rail conference in Ennis, Co Clare.
She is also to order a new rail safety audit following criticism that the one carried out earlier this year by Halcrow did not address all issues posed by new working arrangements for drivers.
Legislation for the rail safety board will be ready by the end of the year. It will be responsible for safety audits and inspections, the investigation of accidents and enforcement of safety rules.
The body will cover the new Luas and metro lines as well as existing services, such as Intercity, DART and "heritage" routes run by private companies and railway enthusiasts. It will have the power to enter premises, receive evidence under oath, issue improvement and prohibition orders and seek High Court injunctions.
Outlining the Government's spending programme, Ms O'Rourke said £185 million would be spent on improving suburban services. Besides an extra 100 DART carriages, new stations would be opened at Barrow Street in Dublin, Monasterevin, Co Kildare, and beside the Intel complex in Leixlip, Co Kildare.
Referring to her recent policy paper on CIE, she said it indicated that Iarnrod Eireann should be "divided into two independent companies, one responsible for the railway infrastructure and the other for the operation of railway services".
"In setting out the framework for institutional reform and inviting reaction to it, I am anxious to emphasise that any change will be implemented in a spirit of partnership," the Minister said.
However, the SIPTU rail branch secretary, Mr Tony Tobin, described the proposal to divide Iarnrod Eireann as a prelude to privatisation. He said it would add to the company's management costs and be of no value to the company.
od Eireann, begun in 1996, must be accelerated. Industrial relations had deteriorated seriously over the past 18 months and the Labour Relations Commission's advisory service was to conduct a special investigation into the infrastructure department Ms O'Rourke wanted to hive off from the main company.
A CIE worker director, Mr Paul Cullen, said the workplace was not perfect but was a lot better than five years ago. "We had to work in very difficult situations with slums of stations and third-world trains, and a demoralised workforce that bore the brunt of customers' rightful anger, instead of the politicians who were really to blame for decades of gross underfunding of CIE."
Meanwhile, the SIPTU vice-president, Mr Jack O'Connor, told delegates the union was determined to ensure that improvements in living standards in the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness were delivered. He described remarks by the Irish Farmers' Association president, Mr Tom Parlon, about wagedriven inflation as objectionable.