Last month an Offaly man who was hit by a train and lost a leg while lying drunkenly across a railway line was awarded substantial damages at the High Court, writes Kevin Myers.
Mr Justice O'Donovan - clearly a clever fellow - assessed gross damages at €740,539 (don't you just love the €39?) but, because he held the "victim" , Derek Raleigh, 85 per cent negligent, Hopalong will receive just 15 per cent of that - €111,081.
Is that what they teach you in law school? How to divvy up responsibility when a man gets paralytically drunk and lies down on a railway track? By Jove, it sounds a rare old art form indeed, as difficult to master as chicken-sexing. So Derek Raleigh gets one hundred and eleven thousand and eighty one euro for getting legless: happy Christmas indeed.
One August night in 1995, Derek Raleigh and his girlfriend went to a stretch of the Clara-Tullamore railway on which people regularly socialise - really, really stupid people, that is. They had to mount a 4 ft 6 in wall and then clamber down a steep bank to join the drunken revelries. His companions later left, but he and his girlfriend fell asleep on the tracks. Then, toot-toot! A toot too late.
Judge O'Donovan declared shrewdly: "I cannot think of anything more irresponsible than that a grown man would sit on a railway line in the middle of the night with a feed of alcoholic drink on him." He concluded that Derek Raleigh, who had been often enough chased off the line before, was "largely" the author of his own misfortune.
Here: what's with this "largely"? Nobody made him drink, or climb over a wall, or climb down a steep embankment, or gather with friends on the track, or drink six or eight cans of lager, and/or lie down and go to sleep on the tracks. Nobody. Absolutely nobody.
Yet all this notwithstanding, the judge ruled that he must also reflect the rail company's responsibility for failing to take appropriate steps to prevent trespass, which it must have known was taking place, by an apportionment of fault, albeit small. (Lawyers tend to regard a sum like €111,081 "small".) The company had implicitly facilitated or tolerated access to the railway over the wall by its failure to take appropriate steps to prevent access, but he was not persuaded that the train driver was in any way to blame.
Not "persuaded" that the train-driver was to blame? Well, bully for the poor old train-driver; but had anyone attempted to persuade the judge that the driver was to blame for some drunken cretin lying down on a railway line in the middle of the night? And has the driver thought about suing the inebriate imbecile for the nightmares people in his profession quite often get after they've run someone over? (Think about it, Mr Driver.)
Which leaves the question: how on earth can Iarnród Éireann now make its railway lines free of the Derek Raleighs of the land? After all, it had chased him off the track many times before. Some moonless night, he might hop back on the track and hazard his remaining leg. And of course, he can't properly be chased away any more, for that would be discrimination against the disabled. Moreover, once he has lost that surviving leg, he has two arms still to go. He might then even chance his arm (so to speak) with some of his other protuberantly profitable parts to lay on the line, collaring the 15 per cent every time.
But it's not just Derek and his corporeally reductive habits which our national railway has to worry about. Iarnród Éireann has hundreds of miles of track for nocturnal revellers to caper on. How is it meant to seal it all off to prevent these incursions occurring? With barbed wire and watchtowers along the entire length? This could prove rather expensive to the Government, the ultimate owner. In 2002, the national railway company was given a €155 million subsidy by the State - €3 for every ticket bought, plus another €20 million for track safety.
This was, of course, before Derek made his own little inroad on the Iarnród piggy-bank. Twenty million won't build you much of a wall alongside our railway network: ask the Israelis, who know all about building walls to keep people out.
But then what about all the people who fall off the wall while trying to join the on-track festivities? Since wicked old Iarnród Éireann will probably have made no attempt to erect safety nets to catch tumbling revellers or to supply them with parachutes, it could be 15 per cent liable for damages there as well.
Do you know, I'm not sure Iarnród Éireann is up to this task. After all, it's not Swiss railways, which last had a train late in 1944, after its engine was hit by Allied bombs as it left the station. The footplatemen towed it the rest of the way. It was still five minutes late and the driver was fed live to the herd of wild cuckoo-clocks in Zurich zoo.
Irish Rail timetables, however, are based on the calendar, not hours and minutes - the train standing at platform two is the Sligo express, departing around January, sort of. Iarnród Éireann can't even manage to erect signs outside Sallins railway station saying "station". So how can it possibly protect hundreds of miles of track all around Ireland? Ah well. At least Derek Raleigh has answered one question. Now I know why the French call it chemin de fir.