Mr. Jim Meade:

There is always a security risk in everything we do. It is slightly different but the model is the same, but we ran a lot of late night trains over the Christmas period in the greater Dublin area and we put security on all of those. We got very good numbers on them this year and numbers are growing every year. As we put on those Christmas and new year late-night trains, they get support and the use of them is growing.

On all of our intercity services over the past three years, we have put onboard customer service people back on board. We do not have an intercity train that moves around now with nobody on board. We did for a number of years but we have corrected that, and anywhere we have issues, we will put in security, be it in stations or on board. There are no right or wrong answers. Antisocial behaviour is a societal issue. We see it. Dublin Bus, Bus Éireann and Luas see it, and we see it off the public transport system as well. It will be constant monitoring, reviewing and seeing where we need security. We have more than doubled our security presence across the network in recent years and we keep responding to the need.

On security, there is an onus on me to say for the record of the committee that An Garda Síochána has been very co-operative with us in this area. We have done an awful lot of very good work with it. It has put in transport hubs for us and it does the twin-track days. There is great co-operation between ourselves and An Garda Síochána and there is a great response to the whole antisocial area.