The Public Accounts Committee has requested a report from the National Transport Authority into why Iarnród Éireann has a surplus of 21 rail carriages which cost €44 million.
The public rail company purchased 234 carriages in four tranches between 2004 and 2008. However, falling passenger numbers means it does not require all the carriages from the last batch on a day-to-day basis.
Committee chairman John McGuinness said “essentially what we have here is a ghost train of carriages going nowhere”. The committee wants to know why Iarnród Éireann purchased extra carriages when “all of the indicators” suggested public transport passenger numbers were going to decline.
“You had expressways, you had motorways, you had greater access from city to city and so on, you had private bus operators increasing their numbers… They should have factored that into the purchase… If it was a private company it would be broke and gone.
Mr McGuinness, Fianna Fáil TD for Carlow-Kilkenny, said he wanted to know whether Iarnród Éireann has attempted to lease the extra stock to other operators outside the country.
He also expressed misgivings about the management of CIÉ, which received a Government subvention of €36 million last year. It is unfair for taxpayers “to shoulder a burden of €44 million” while CIÉ was responsible for “massive waste and inefficency”, he said.
“On one side you have the subsidy going into them and on the other side you have massive waste and inefficiency within the company. PWC noted in their accounts at the end of the year that the company was in a very perilous state. So we would need to look at the management of CIE.”
Iarnród Éireann spokeswoman Jane Cregan defended the decision to purchase the stock, saying numbers had been expected to continue rising when the decision was made.
“Look at all the houses that were built all around the country and people thought that there would be people for those as well,” she said. “The first of those carriage orders was placed in 2004… a time when our passenger numbers were increasing…so we made a decision that we would invest at that point in new carriages.”
She said the company used all of the carriages, revolving their use in accordance with maintenance schedules, and dismissed claims that they could become obsolete, saying they have a lifespan of 35 to 40 years.
While rail passenger numbers have declined in recent years, Ms Cregan said they have now stabilised and Iarnród Éireann predicts numbers to increase when the economy picks up.
She said if and when demand increased the extra carriages will put Iarnród Éireann in a position to “satisfy that demand right away”.
