Sir, - With regard to the piffle in your property supplement of November 16th, I must point out that Donabate is not well served by the daily commuter trains operating between Drogheda and Dublin. Nor is it well served by the Dundalk to Dublin trains. The only people well served on the Northern railway line are the people who commute between Belfast and Dublin on the elitist Enterprise trains. Those commuters travel in perfumed, air-conditioned, silent luxury, all comfortably seated.
The people of Donabate and other towns along the line are consigned to the cattle-wagons masquerading as commuter trains. These trains are dangerously overcrowded as they pull in to Donabate and at Malahide the really dangerous crushing starts as desperate commuters try to force their way on. Of the much vaunted Malahide DART there is not a sign. The first DART leaves Malahide at 11 a.m. At no time have I seen an Iarnrod Eireann employee either supervise or prevent this crushing.
Sooner or later there will be a serious injury or fatality caused by this insane practice. The overcrowding of trains, frequent signalling breakdowns and jamming of automatic door locks only served to highlight a major inherent design flaw in all of these trains.
Government mismanagement and industrial unrest in Iarnrod Eireann will for the foreseeable future ensure an unsafe, unreliable and-under resourced railway service for the people of north County Dublin. The commuting workers who are fuelling the economy of the so-called Celtic Tiger are obviously regarded as little else than slaves by the government Eurocrats who cruise around in their chauffeur-driven motorcades of Mercs.
To the people of north County Dublin I say: Rise up and demand a decent, safe and reliable train service! - Yours, etc.,
Fred Connolly, Turvey Woods, Donabate, Co Dublin.