Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 9 October 2024

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport

Rail Timetables: Iarnród Éireann

1:30 pm

Mr. Jim Meade:

Absolutely, of course there will. We will be monitoring it very closely, I can assure the Senator. There is ultimate focus on this in-house. We do not like to get things wrong. Nobody does, I suppose. We are certainly aware we have upset a lot of our customer base and that it just has not worked. There is a detailed process we have to go through to make a change. People say to us, "Why don't you just change back?". We have not been able to because we have to take it through a process with the NTA where we get authority from it. We then have to go to the essential functions body, EFB, which is an EU-regulated body. It is a process we have to go through. Then we have to change all our own staff rosters and links. This has actually been a very quick turnaround. There has never been such a short period ever. In fairness to the NTA, it was very co-operative, as was the EFB. Our own staff and trade unions were co-operative in understanding there was a problem and allowing us to make a very quick change. Some of the customers who were travelling do not see it as a quick change because they had to put up with a couple of weeks of disruption when it was not working. I can assure the Senator we will monitor this very closely.

Comments

No comments

Log in or join to post a public comment.