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MINISTER FOR TRANSPORT Leo Varadkar has signalled a change is imminent at Irish Rail as the Government has decided not to seek an extension to Ireland’s derogation under EU rail market legislation.
The exemption, which expires in March next year, allows Ireland to retain a single operator which regulates, operates and maintains the country’s mainline rail network.
Varadkar said that Ireland is the only country in the EU which has such an arrangement in place.
Following a Cabinet meeting today, he announced a wide-ranging consultation process which will consider how best to restructure Irish Rail.
A separate body will be established to determine charges for access to the railway system and how capacity should be allocated.
Varadkar says he sees the end of the derogation as an opportunity to “encourage greater efficiency and transparency” in the rail sector.
“European law supports greater competition and freer access to the rail network sector across Europe, principally in the area of freight. I would like Ireland to be well prepared to avail of any such opportunities in the future,” he added.
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Is this country even big enough to need a second operator?
Selling our soul to the devil…again ie EU….
Of course it is big enough. If Estonia with 1.6 million people can do it, why not Ireland with its 4.4 million?
No Erica Ireland is not bg enough he is using this so he can privatise it. Next thing to be privatised. I fear we will soon rue the day we elected these people. What scares me is that FF and the Greens were incompetent and arrogant this crowd are the same except they are callous with it.
Might have trouble privatising irish rail as it hasnt made a profit for years! And anyway it could only be improved, train services in ireland are rubbish.
More directives from the EU ….. This country is not big enough ,and yes it is so that it can be privatised .
Yvonne , you are correct , this government are just as incompetent as FFailuresand Greens, but this lot is Callous.
Ireland needs some competition to provide better service and faster trains. The Belfast enterprise is now slower than it was 100 years ago.
Don’t be ridiculous.
More operators will be a good thing. Irish Rail prices are ridiculous.
Jack Irish rail prices are amongst the lowest in western Europe!
If deregulation comes into effect it will only mean one thing and I reckon that is a UK style of multi rail operators all hiking their prices up to the highest level with multi teired pricing which makes no sense to anyone and service which will decline!
You moan about Irish rail now but truth be known, since their boom time investment they are pretty good value for your punt!
All depends on where you’re going and where you’re coming from. The train costs €59 return for me to get from college in Galway, home to Tipperary. Not feasible every weekend, or even every few months.
A return ticket from Dublin to Sligo (7 hours roughly) costs EUR80 on a state-funded monopoly, with reserved seats that are not actually reserved, and usually filthy. A return trip from Glasgow to Fort William (more than ten hours) costs 40 pounds on a privatised service with reserved seats that actually carry your name and are clean.
Let’s not exaggerate (significantly) here Brian! I know us Irish love to whine and moan and take liberties but unless you are travelling in the first class cabin you are more likely to pay €50 at the higher rate in the Dublin-Sligo line. I know myself cos I use it as far as Collooney on a way more regular basis then I would like! And saying it takes 7 hours couldn’t be further from the truth!
@ Tony, I live in Sligo. Although it’s been a while since I used the train. I concede your point on the price, having just checked it now (last time I travelled Sligo to Dublin and back again it cost me EUR78). It appears this is now down to about 46. However it does take roughly 3hrs 15 to go one way (usually as a result of a lengthy delay somewhere round Mullingar), which does add up to 7 hours.
Proof to back up that statement?
Having lived in the UK, rail prices are actually comparatively low here. Yes you can pre-book by a few weeks and get the nice low £20 fare from Liverpool to London for example but you can also turn up on the day and expect to pay £300 for the privilege…
Jack can i ask what station in Tipperary you are travelling too. I take the train home from Galway to Tipp a few times a month, sometimes via Limerick and sometimes via Portarlington and its never cost anything near €59 for me.
Having travelled in the UK, I’ve found that rail prices there are absolutely ludicrious. In fact, it’s hard to find a British commuter who doesn’t constantly complain about the continually increasing prices (and incredibly inconsistent prices with so many operators involved) and the general travel chaos and poor service resulting from the opening up of the market.
Go, even now, to any UK rail website and look up prices for comparable journeys to ones in Ireland. They’re typically 60-80% dearer.
HJave you ever thought about how much money it takes to run the railway? And you are over-exaggerating.
Leo – Steam trains in the UK in 1922 ran at a speed of 80 MPH -some even faste like the London Edinborough route. Irish rail mainline trains run at 42.3 MPH nearly 3 hours to Galway and Sligo. The CEO of Irish rail gets paid more than Obama and a bonus at Xmas for trains that run slower now than 70 years ago. He should be fired for inefficiency and poor performance . Croke Park – typical of what is happening as they get richer and the service gets poorer to the public in all areas. Only 4 poorer countries in Europe have slower speeds and they’ve just joined the EU.
exactly
A bit of competition can’t be bad
It was a disaster in britain!
@Erica: I see your point but I guess the same could have been said of Bus Eireann. What I’d like to see is a high speed sub-sea rail link between Ireland and the UK. What are the chances I wonder ??!
We have its called ryanair
Well from how I see it, the rail here is so bad, they pretty much compete with Bus Eireann. I mean if there’s anywhere I need to go, I don’t even consider trains!
I think we wont see it in anyone life time
1) Stop comparing salaries to the most underpaid man on the planet, its ridiculous at all levels.
2) I’m guessing there’s something seriously wrong with your comparison. I’d guess that that steam train is a top speed, irrelevant, while your Galway to Sligo one is probably average including loads more stops, I can get from Dublin city centre to North Tipp (Templemore) in an hour and ten minutes which is about the eighty mile an hour rate because it’s a straight run. So the same speed really, excluding the fact that it runs slower through urban areas around Dublin than it might.
3) I can also see on the less stop routes it’s two hours and thirty according to their timetable which I’ve found to be very accurate, so that makes it around fifty miles including the fifteen minutes spent at stops add five to ten minutes for slowing and speeding up at these stops, your probably into the mid sixties, still slow but not as hyperbolic as your statement.
Also if you’re on about generally when you say the ‘service gets poorer to the public in all areas’ rather your specific case and your specific route…. You’re just wrong.
PS: Sorry got bored with college work…
:)
Don’t forget to add the time and cost of the luas or bus from Dublin city centre out to Heuston station!
With oil prices only going to get higher, someone could make a solid business in freight using an infrastructure that is under used.
I don’t think any one would touch passenger services ! But that too could be profitable, if efficiencies could be achieved , I think any way
Exactly, In fairness they did say that they primarily envision it concerning freight services. Also Irish Rail prices have improved a lot recently if people bother looking for deals. For example a student return from Cork to Dublin costs €30, while if you book a week or two in advance you can get an adult single for the same trip for €10. Then again lets not let facts get in the way of a good anti-Gov anti-EU moan.
Lorcan a bus to cork is always cheap not just when you get the lucky dip cheap fare, it is also more flexible as you get it from one city centre and it drops you off in the other city centre!
Best of luck Leo I believe group of investors looked at this some time and ran a mile following feasibility study.
Michael o leary is alleged to have said that there are some things even he would not tackle
No doubt trouble at mill ahead.
it’ll probably be light rail from and to major hub towns not covered by Irish Rail if some competitor does want a piece of the action, it’ll require investment, sure it takes money to make money
This will bring about massive strike action when it starts. So something that has gotten a bit more reliable recently will go to pot during transition period. Whatever about the end state…,
or they might up their game, upgrading the rail tracks to allow faster speeds than the motorway would be a start. its laughable that the Luas is faster than the intercity trains. And bringing those extra carriages online apap! After paying 50 quid for a ticket why do I have to stand all the way home?
ha ha, asap even lol
It will be a bigger mess then UK rail privatisation, add to that the cost to the public purse in subsidies to private operators and finally leading to the whole lot being brought back into public ownership further down the line at a huge expense. And the build up of additional maintenance costs a private operator will try to avoid!
Fun this the last time FG were in power they tried selling off and/or shut some parts of the railway! We better nail our houses down before they try sell them from under our feet too. Talk about kick a man when he’s down!!
Oh go and kiss some failed fianna fail politicians arse or maybe your more into the trendy green party bullshit that cost us all so dearly!
or maybe foggy_lad we believe in neither of those busted flushes pedalling their civil war bullshit politics
Give us trains that run right to the airport, ferry terminals etc.
I can get from galway to dublin airport in 2 hours 45 mins by bus for €15, i want the same to dublin airport on a train.
In 2012,this is not a lot to ask, is it?
Also, think of all those people arriving at dublin airport that want to see the west and would like a cheap, relaxing view of the country on a train where they can use wifi, have a drink, get a quick meal etc etc.
There will never be a rail link to Dublin airport except in some train spotters wet dream or in the fry model railway.
What makes you say that?
There isn’t much chance of that until after the recession.
Having travelled on trains in most European countries I am aware that high speed trains in Germany were the same cost as our mainline trains yet travel the same distance(Galway or Sligo) in 50 mins. 2 hours less and Irish rail cheer at cutting 10 minutes off the run time. The bigger mistake is that the track needs to be replaced on a lot of routes to make it possible for the trains to run at full speed. Why did they purchase trains before they laid the tracks? Corruption and brown envelopes. The Chinese high speed trains are cheeper than out slow mainline trains and they could travel from Dublin to Galway in 38 minutes. Irish rail are to put down new tract so Leo Please let it take high speed trains.
Frank it’s not as easy a laying new track! Whole new rail lines need to be built. You can’t put a high speed rail line over the existing track as they constitute too many turns and gradients. Most of Europes high speed rail is all on brand new lines and well all of chinas is also brand new. The cost to do this is staggering and there is simply no need for it on such a small island with only 4.5 (and probably dropping) million people!
I do agree that many of the speed restrictions need to be removed an the trains allowed to run at their designed speed but we don’t need high speed rail in this country!
The biggest problem of Irish railways is the old alignments were not meant for fast heavy trains but for slow old tank engines drawing a few cattle and pigs to market and the beet to the factory and of course his lordship to his country estate. The lines are full of twists and turns, European high speed rails are more straightforward without all the rural branch line baggage!
I get a direct train from Maynooth every morning. Stops at Drumcondra. It takes it 30mins. Pray tell, why does a train from Maynooth to Drumcondra that stops at 8stops on the way take 34mins!?!?! Silly
It’s a congested line.
Trains can’t just slow down and stop like a car or bus or truck, they are more like a supertanker when it comes to stopping at stations and have to start slowing down far away from the station, then they don’t have great acceleration either so taking off from a station also takes time. I would say that 38 minutes with 8 stops was very good time if the non-stop train took 30minutes!
What the fuck does this mean?
“European law supports greater competition and freer access to the rail network sector across Europe, principally in the area of freight. I would like Ireland to be well prepared to avail of any such opportunities in the future,”
Does Leo the gobshite think that there is a rail connection from Ireland to Europe? Is there no end to the man’s stupidity?
Relax there Ciaro. You appear to be a small bit hysterical.
They are currently upgrading the main cork Dublin line to speeds of 100mph . Not as easy as you may think. For safety different curves and heights of the rails at these curves have to be factored in to accomadate the higher speeds. With this brings parts of the track where solid banks of rock at both sides has to be taken back because of these new curves.
It’s a shame so many old rail lines around the country were closed. One of the only good things the British left was a decent rail infra structure, but we decided to close most of it down and tear it up. Many closed rail lines all over the country. There even used to be a team system in cork city.
*tram system (dam iPhone and my fat fingers)
Although all these countries have more than one operator the state in several EU countries holds a majority share in these new operators. In France SNCF holds a majority share in all of the rail operators. The UK’s rail system which is privatized was recently ranked the worst in Europe in terms of cost of fares, comfort and efficiency. Knowing this government I’m sure they’ll follow the British model and it will be a complete disaster although they might surprise me.
So much money has gone into Irish Rail to date from the EU and the Irish taxpayers it is reasonable to expect trains that are up to scratch!! I hat a commuter train back from Sligo in the past 12 months on Sunday evenings when the right mainline train was not available. As a commuter train is for short journeys it is difficult for people with back problems to travel long distance on these trains. I was in pain when I got to Dublin- again. I did not get a cheaper fare for bad service just the same as normal. I use the train to avoid back pain. I was told that the trains they purchased were so poor that the manufacturers had to keep a team of 20 engineers in the Aisling hotel for 18 months and Irish rail insisted that replacement engines be on site at Hurston as there were so maney problems with these trains. It’s another example of Priory Hall practice – buy with taxpayers money and the quality dosent matter. Well it is not good enough.
that is a crazy situation, its the same deal on the Westport train, which usually only gets 3 carriages instead of what should be six, plus there is no point what so ever reserving a seat, nobody cares that you have and the conductors are powerless to intervene
Privatise the shite out of it! Competition brings class and efficiency .. Semi state nonsense!
Like eircom and our high speed broadband network ?
The only way Irish rail will be attractive to investors is if it is all pulled up and started again from scratch instead of just using the same lines built by the Victorians, the single line tracks that run up most of the East coast need to go for a start and the fact that there is no rail link from Rosslare port to Waterford and then on to Cork is ridiculous. Surely it would make economic sense to have such a rail link, also how about joining up Ballina with Sligo and then running a line to Derry via Fermanagh and Tyrone? Just one thing, don’t use the British model as template for privatising Irish rail, the most expensive rail fares in Europe are in the UK and the service is crap especially in the south east.
The people of Cavan, Monaghan and Donegal have nothing to add to this thread seeing as we’re the only 3 counties within this republic without a rail network.
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