Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I agree with the Deputy that this is the easiest, quickest and best available solution to us, helped by the fact that the carriages will be ready to go within a number of months. Iarnród Éireann will have to assess where the real bottlenecks lie. Deputy Durkan is suggesting there is a regular pattern of overcrowding in Kildare, which I can well imagine, as well as on the northern line, which was mentioned earlier. These are two areas of difficulty. In Dublin there are real problems with housing and lots of young people are now commuting to college, as well as people going to work. We need to make sure we have a sufficient number of carriages in place. Those 41 new inter-city rail cars will be coming on stream within months. They are here already but we just need to get them commissioned. They will make a significant enhancement to the capacity, particularly on those networks where people are standing on trains. That is not tolerable. We have to increase capacity and make sure the quality of the service meets people's expectations.

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