Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 24 January 2024

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport

Capital Projects and Operations: Iarnród Éireann

Mr. Jim Meade:

We will follow up. It would not be the same train. There is no way we have several trains out there with it not working. There is something misaligned there, but we will have a look. We will absolutely have a look and come back to both the Leas-Chathaoirleach and the Senator on it.

On the Rosslare line issue raised by the Senator's constituent, yes, we would like to add two more carriages. Sometimes, I say to myself tongue-in-cheek when someone suggests it that I wish we had thought of it. We have every wheel turning. We do not have two spare carriages to put on. However, the really good news is that we will have. We have a fleet coming. The first order of our new fleet, the Alstom battery-electric trains, is coming. The very first train will arrive in Q2 of this year. That goes into a very rigorous testing process with our regulator, the Commission for Railway Regulation. It is a very slow, onerous process because it is under the jurisdiction of the European Union Agency for Railways, UAR. It can take approximately nine months to commission that train and prove it is safe on our network and all the things that go with it. It will be at least that time. Once that is done, that is the head of the series and we start rolling out after that.

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