A 25-year-old woman died when she fell from a train while returning home to Limerick following a 10-week holiday travelling through Central and South America, Tipperary Circuit Court was told yesterday.
The mother of the late Claire Walsh, Landsdowne Park, Ennis Road, Limerick, took a civil action against Iarnród Éireann seeking damages for the loss and mental distress caused to her and her husband, Liam, and their other five children arising from the incident on the Dublin-Cork line at Bishopswood, Dundrum, Co Tipperary, on June 15th, 1999.
Mrs Mary Walsh said that attending court to give evidence was devastating and it felt like she was burying her daughter all over again. Iarnród Éireann should take responsibility for the tragedy, she believed.
Mr David Walsh, a younger brother of the deceased, said he had been travelling abroad with his late sister for 2½ months. On the day they arrived back at Dublin Airport they got the 9 p.m. train from Heuston Station to return home to Limerick.
They had bought two bottles of duty-free vodka and opened one on the train. They bought some small bottles of orange as mixers and shared their drink with people around them. In all, about three-fifths of the bottle of vodka were consumed throughout the train journey.
Ms Walsh went to the toilet about 10 minutes before Limerick Junction where they had to change trains. She told witness she would be back in a minute, but that was the last her brother saw of her. There was nothing unusual about her demeanour at the time.
He became very concerned and reported her missing. He was told later that night at Tipperary town Garda station that her body had been found on the track some miles back by gardaí and Iarnród Éireann staff.
Counsel for Mrs Walsh, Mr Michael Delaney, said a ticket collector had noticed a door open in a carriage some miles before the train's arrival at Limerick Junction. The carriages on the train had been operated by the company since 1975 and had manual doors that could only be opened from inside by sliding down a window and reaching out to release an outside handle.
A report into this type of door by the Health and Safety Executive in the UK had highlighted 270 incidents between 1984 and 1991 in which people had either been killed or injured as a result of falling out the doors.
The report stated that a high degree of vigilance and training by station platform staff was required to ensure such doors were properly closed. In the light of that report there was an onus on Iarnród Éireann to take these carriages out of operation entirely and failure to provide proper staff training amounted to negligence.
A train examiner for the company, Mr Harold Cronin, said he found the locking mechanism on the door of the carriage in good working order when he checked it in Cork later that night.
Mr Stephen Mooney, a consultant engineer commissioned by the company to carry out an assessment of the carriage, said he was quite happy with the door's locking system.
But he said it was possible the door might not have been closed properly.