Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The trains to Dublin are very successful. They are full most mornings. It is great to see. The Cork to Dublin service picks up passengers from Limerick at Limerick Junction. It is really successful. There are two early morning direct services from Limerick to Dublin and there are only three carriages on that service. It is fine. I get on that service every Wednesday morning and I have a seat. When you get beyond Thurles, every station, such as Portarlington and Portlaoise, all the way along takes on hundreds of passengers. You get to a point on the second half of that rail journey when passengers are not just standing at the end of carriages - that has always happened back through the years when trains are busy - but also down along the carriages. You are sitting in your seat, doing a few emails and someone is holding onto your seat for an hour and a half of the journey, swaying over and back. They are standing down the middle of the carriages. On any morning, there could be 200 people standing down along that three-carriage train. It is devastating when you arrive into Heuston Station and you see rolling stock parked up from Inchicore works all the way in. There is not a huge number of carriages parked up, but there are certainly enough carriages that should be brought down to the likes of Limerick, Galway and Cork last thing at night. People should be going home on those trains so that on the early morning services, there is a fully-loaded, five- or six-carriage train going up to the capital. I would like the Minister to take that up with Jim Meade. I do not even know insurance-wise if it is right for so many people to be standing on a train doing 80 mph for an hour and a half on the line to Dublin.