IRISH RAIL IS “in the market” to restore the dining cart service on all routes, but whether the plan comes to fruition will depend on cost.

The trolley service was taken off trains at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and has never fully returned.

The dining cart resumed on the Dublin-Cork route in April 2023 but most lines remain without the service.

At the Oireachtas Transport Committee this afternoon, politicians asked Iarnród Éireann Chief Executive Jim Meade about the current status of the service and about its profitability when it was operational.

Meade said that “even back in the boom time”, the railway operator was paying for a catering company to provide the service on trains.

“We were paying an annual contribution and the operator was making what they could off of that,” Meade said.

“Post-Covid, people wanted to shift all the risk onto the rail company. The kind of numbers that were being suggested were just just not tenable for us,” he said.

“However, we did use the budget we had to put on the Cork service because that for us was the premier route – it’s the longest route, it catches Kerry, it catches Limerick, so we were getting a decent benefit of it.”

Meade said that rolling it back out on the Cork route first “allows suppliers to understand what the market is now like, how many people use it, and what the footfall would be”.

“We are currently in the market to restore a full service but it will come down to a cost factor,” he said.

“We’re all seeing cost inflation in every aspect of life now. But we would hope to be able to put services back on all routes post that procurement process.”