OPINION: Time for Irish Rail to reinstate trolley service

It is now over two years and three months since the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared that Covid-19 no longer represented a global health emergency and life as we know it has returned to normal since.

Most organisations have endeavoured to try and reinstate the level of service that they had before the pandemic but Irish Rail has failed to reinstate a trolley service on all of its services apart from the trains that run on the Dublin to Cork service.

The issue was once again raised by councillors at a meeting of the Westport/Belmullet Municipal District last week and Cllr John O'Malley spoke of his own experience on a recent journey to Dublin for a funeral.

“I left on the 7.10am train to get to a funeral in Dublin and had to come down again early to attend another funeral. There was nothing to be had, neither a cup of tea or coffee.

“I went out to the funeral and was lucky to get a taxi back to the station in time for the train. I had nothing to eat or drink until I got back to Westport again. I thought if I could get a coffee or a snack or anything but you could get nothing on the train. I have heard so many people complain about the same thing and surely in this day and age it should be rectified,” he said.

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Irish Rail have previously stated that it is not possible to run the trolley service at a profit but it's simply not good enough that the service can be provided on the Dublin to Cork service while other passengers on numerous other routes have to sit and suffer.

The Government has on a number of occasions stated that it wants the public to use public transport as often as possible and there is no doubt that it is much less stressful to jump on the train when heading to the capital instead of driving and dealing with the heavy traffic that we often associate with Dublin.

At last week's meeting, Derrick Curran, the regional manager with Irish Rail, did provide some hope when he said that as far as he was aware, there were some tenders issued through the National Transport Authority to start a trolley service back on some routes but he was not clear whether this included the Westport route.

The hope is that sooner rather than later, Irish Rail will see sense and reinstate the service. Many elderly people who avail of free travel are surely entitled to be able to purchase a cup of tea or coffee on their journey to Dublin and the public should be lobbying their local TDs to make Irish Rail grab the bull by the horns and get the service up and running once again.

Last week's meeting also heard that in 2024, 714,000 customers passed through the station in Westport. It is an invaluable service in terms of bringing tourists into the west and everything should be done to ensure that all those customers are getting the best service possible from both Irish Rail and the Government.

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