Mr. Jim Meade:

We have reasonably good news on carriages and trains - they are two different things. Over the next number of weeks, we will get final certification from the CRR to start putting all 41 new carriages into the fleet. That will make existing trains longer for more capacity and people will not have to sit on the floor. Some of the Senator's colleagues who spoke earlier were from the Galway-Sligo-Westport area, where we are quite busy on the inter-city routes. That fleet will start rolling out over the next number of weeks and months. All 41 will go in to add capacity. We will accept the first of our new battery electric trains in June and July. There is quite an onerous testing and commissioning programme by our regulator so they will not go into revenue-earning service until the end of quarter 1 or early quarter 2 of 2025 probably. For subsequent trains, we have done what we call a "head of series" so we can roll out more of that type of train. Through the latter half of 2025 and through 2026, we will add the first order of trains, 19 new trains, and the second order, a further 18 battery electric trains.

Those trains will allow us to cascade existing trains out of the greater Dublin area into the regions and routes, significantly adding to capacity.

The timetable issue was flagged with me before by the Senator in a one-to-one session. I flagged it with Bus Éireann afterwards. We are starting to examine it to determine how we can make things work. Local Link, which we had not spoken about before, could be added to the debate to determine whether there is anything we can do in that regard. We will certainly take it back to the NTA.

On car parking and later trains for Ennis, we have got funding to examine capacity on the Ennis-Limerick line. It links to the Shannon link, which the Senator has mentioned. On whether we should put a station at Cratloe, the process on capacity on the Ennis line is now under way, so we will be asking whether we should put a passing loop at Sixmilebridge and looking at what else we should do. We need to extend some platforms to put longer trains on the route. We are full all the time on the route. That is all happening.

While this does not really deal with the issue the Senator has raised, we have provided earlier and later trains to Cork and Limerick, so students can now get to Cork earlier and people can get out of Dublin earlier. Someone can now leave Dublin and be in Shannon for a meeting at 9 a.m., which was not the case before. That is starting to come good.

On the information aspect, Daktronics does a lot of work for us. It is under new ownership now. We are rolling the initiative out across the system. Therefore, what you see in Limerick station will eventually be in all the smaller stations. We are building a new facility here in Dublin, the national train control centre, which members will have seen coming in on the train. It will be able to send information to all the signs when the project comes to finality.