Most of my intercity journeys in the UK are on refurbished 1980s MK3s, the majority of which are more comfortable than the new Irish Rail stock IMO.

Yea, bring change

Its a train not a restaurant.

They don’t stop you bringing your own food on the train, you know.

It’s a commercial enterprise. The more breakfasts they sell the less tax u have to pay to subsidise it.

Railtrack was a for-profit company that used to run the tracks and signals, motivated by profit. The company running the tracks and signals now has a public service motivation. The UK govt have no intention of getting into the business of running train services in most instances.

All I suggested was that running a commuter rail service is not the same as running an intercity rail service, and that neither was the same as running a rail network and that the roles could be separated. I didn’t say they should be private companies exclusively motivated by profit. There’s nothing earth shattering about running separate services separately. Do Irish rail run the Luas? Nope. The RPA owns the lines, they are maintained by Alstrom, the tram services on are run by VeoliaTransdev, the ticketing is run by someone else and the cleaning by another company. Compare the two management models and see which runs the better service.

You can’t put high speed rail on the tracks we have now. The TGV in France has to have special tracks laid because fast trains need straight flat tracks, so you’d need a whole new line avoiding hills, valleys, turns etc. Someone I know was an engineer on the Dublin-Cork motorway. They had to CPO loads of houses, some of which were less than ten years old, because they were in the route of the motorway and had to be flattened. We don’t do planning, we do f**king up.

Irishrail is not expensive. Book online 3 days in advance and ya can travel return for less than 30 most I of time. Compared to most european countries IE is cheap

Had you read the article you’d have seen “The money,.. comes from the European Regional Development Fund”. So your fare increases are not going towards them, they are in fact going to union officials and their greedy members.

I rarely defend Irish Rail but I have to say they are not a rip off when you compare them to Amtrak in the States, Via Rail in Canada or services in the UK.

€30 return for a 200km journey Dublin to Galway, 4hr journey time leaving at 12pm. €50 return for a 1000km journey Paris to Biarritz, 4hr journey time, we’re not being ripped off at all!

Please show me the time table with the 4 hr trip Dublin to Galway. Also would like to see how to get from Paris to Biarritz in 4 hrs , and for €50 return ??

Here’s your Irish Rail http://journeyplanner.irishrail.ie/bin/query.exe/en?OK#focus

And your Paris to Biarritz http://www.voyages-sncf.com/billet-train/resultat?hid=DMS

The Paris one is actually 5hrs on this line but it can be done in 4h 10mins, I did it last year.
Im pretty sure that if you know how to use this app your able to search information yourself

I did , and no where found the Dublin to Galway train taking 4 hrs , nor could I see the Paris to Biarritz train taking as little as 4 hrs. I am also struggling to find the €50 return fee you speak of. But never let facts get in the way of a story

Well there you go I posted it for you, problem solved, galway train leaves Dublin at 12pm, journey time 4hr 05mins and Biarritz train leaves Paris at 10:15am, joyrney time 5hr 10mins, both same price.

Try getting the train in Japan. Bring your dowry with you.

There is an intercity running today and duration of journey from Dublin to Galway is 4hrs 5 mins.

Aaron the 12pm train to Galway takes 4 hours because there is two changes of train on that service. Why not quote the 1130am direct train that takes 2hrs 37mins or the 1430 direct train that takes 2hrs 35mins???

There’s a train Paris -Biarritz for €36 return next Thursday! That’s the same as one-way Dublin-Cork. Yup, irishrail are great.

The 4 Hour, 5 Minute train to Galway @ 12pm is via Limerick Junction & Limerick. It’s technically a connection which is why the website is showing it to you. If you go direct with no changes it’s 2:45 or less.

So compared to others we’re doing great, France is 3.5 times the size of Ireland and they still offer a better deal. I wish people would start comparing pay of similar trades across Europe and figure out why we are so expensive for everything! Then complain to your overpaid politician about the expense of living here and you’ll be told to emigrate I bet!

@ Stephen,pay really Isin to high here considering the cost of living if we lowered wages we would have to lower the price of everything or else a lot of people couldn’t afford to live..
I’m talking about people on low wages not the 200k a year (w)banker.

Hey Aaron, I can’t find a return fare from Paris to Biarritz for ?50, I’m confident now that you’re full of bull poo.

They’ll take it out on the Dublin-Sligo fare like they always do. As for booking online I recall someone from Irish Rail once stating on The Last Word that the advantage of rail travel over flying around the country was that you dont need advance booking. Irish Rail are the reason we have too many cars on the road.

As much as I dislike the EU right now, if they abandoned all development to focus entirely on the banking crises then the whole EU might reach 2020 levels of development by 2050.

What natural resources? Turf?

@Justin
I suppose so most of the oil and gas rights have been given away and our fishing rights were given away years ago.

We do have some forests left but I think Bertie and a few of his mates are at the top of the queue for them.

Privatisation would be a disaster as they’d only concentrate on the profitable routes and the not so popular but vital routes but be up the creek without a paddle.

If you run a transport system where you own the road and all the traffic on that road and you still can’t make it work there’s something seriously wrong. Commuter services in the cities should be separate from the intercity services. The tracks should be run by another company whose main priority is numbers of passengers. If there’s a commuter train with standing room only, why should it have to compete for priority with an intercity train with 50 people on board?

Read the article – European Commission is paying for them not commuters or Irishrail

Enda Kenny’s face will be on them!