Sir, – While the prospect of opening Ireland's railways to use by multiple or competing organisations, up to and including the prospect of privatisation, may repel some, it is worthwhile debating the State's railway policy ("State under pressure to put rail service out to tender" July 30th).
The existing system is inadequate, insofar as vast areas of the country (such as Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan, as well as the Northern Ireland counties of Tyrone and Fermanagh) have no railways whatsoever.
The existing service on the current network operates at less than 50 per cent of its capacity, and a significant amount of track both in the cities and across the country as a whole sees little or no trains at all, and even the busier stations like Dublin Heuston or Dublin Connolly do not operate late-night inter-city trains.
Other than the Dart line in greater Dublin, there has been no electrification, so major inter-city routes like Dublin to Belfast or Dublin to Cork have their capacity and speeds restricted by the limits of diesel locomotion.
Freight services are minimal and, despite the existence of a double-track line directly into Dublin’s North Wall, there is no passenger service to the boats in Dublin Port (Dún Laoghaire pier’s similar boat train expired in November of 1980).
Trains no longer use the vast bespoke railway and boat terminal in Rosslare Europort, stopping instead at an outdoor trestle platform, a mysterious arrangement which has never been publicly explained.
None of this is the fault of Iarnród Éireann, a semi-state company which is internationally recognised as excellent, with particular regard to its safety record, but reflects the consistent lack of political will to create a coherent and properly supported national rail service.
That Iarnród Éireann might be in the red by €150 million is small beer compared to the deficits run up by certain other utilities or agencies (whose profligacy and inefficiency in certain recent cases seems limitless) and, anyway, people like railways and train rides, if nothing else.
Ireland’s motorways do not run at a profit and this is never questioned so it is unfair to expect the railways to operate on a different playing field. – Yours, etc,
CHRISTIAN MORRIS,
Howth,
Dublin 13.