Derek McDowell (Labour)

I have only had the opportunity to speed read the Bill on which I wish to make a number of brief points. I appreciate that it is normally the role of Opposition Members to say it has been an awful long time since a Bill has come through the other House and that it has taken a long time to get here, but in this case that seems to be peculiarly true. The Bill went through the Dáil shortly after the election in late 2002 and three years have elapsed since it was passed there. From a quick read of the Minister of State's speech, I did not see any explanation for the reason it has taken so long to bring it to this House. I appreciate that the commission is already de facto in position. Perhaps the view is that it did not require statutory backup but, nonetheless, there seems to have been an extraordinary delay in the Bill coming to this House and I presume there is some explanation for that.

The main point I want to make is very complimentary of the Leader of this House. When people look back on her term as Minister for Public Enterprise they will probably see the issue of rail safety and the investment she secured for the permanent way as her major achievement. It is a Department that has seen many failures over the years, with many plans announced and ditched, and a failure to progress many of its plans to completion. However, in this particular case, thankfully, we have made some progress.

The progress arose, as others have said, from the incident in Knockcroghery in the late 1990s and the IRMS report that was completed shortly thereafter. I remember reading the report at that time and I, like many others, was genuinely shocked at the level to which our permanent way had deteriorated. For example, many of the bridges were clearly decrepit, almost falling down. Some of the photographs printed in the rail safety report were genuinely frightening. This was a function of the neglect of the railways over a long period of time.

In essence, we only have a radial service emanating from Dublin, which is under-used for most of the week and serves people who commute to the city from close by or who go down to the country or come up to Dublin at weekends. Frankly, the service had fallen into disuse. The rolling stock had not been replaced and hidden dangers in the system had been overlooked for many years. If anything makes the case for an independent inspectorate that will identify problems in the service and infrastructure, it is the IRMS report that was published a number of years ago.

It is evident from the review group report, completed a number of years after the IRMS report, that much improvement has been made and I want to genuinely compliment the then Minister for Public Enterprise, Senator O'Rourke, on the effort she expended in securing such improvement. In so many other countries, action of that kind only takes place following a serious accident. We are blessed in having managed to avoid any serious accident, excepting that which took place in Cherryville in 1983.

I accept the general proposition that we need a rail safety commission that is separate from the rail operators. However, I am not clear as to how the operation of the commission will intersect with the Health and Safety Authority. The HSA has an overarching responsibility for accidents, safety procedures and ensuring that such procedures are properly followed. There must be, at least, a decent working relationship between the two bodies. Was consideration given to the possibility of integrating the commission into the Health and Safety Authority, so that it could benefit from the experience the HSA has built up in policing safety procedures in other industries? I am unsure how the bodies will relate to one another.

The main issue is one of resources. I accept the general proposition that we should place a statutory duty of care on rail operators, on Iarnród Éireann, Luas and so forth, to look after the safety of their customers. However, we need to be honest and admit that a legal, statutory duty of care is one thing, but what is important is resources. CIE and Iarnród Éireann are State-owned and resourced. The bulk of the subsidy given to CIE goes towards the railways. The experience of three or four years ago proves that if CIE does not have the money, it cannot make the railway safe.

To declare that Iarnród Éireann has a statutory responsibility to ensure a safe railway system is fine, but in practice that responsibility devolves to the Department of Transport and, indirectly, to the Department of Finance. It is up to the Departments to make the resources available, which can be considerable, to ensure we have a safe system, that bridges are underpinned, level crossings are safely operated and so on. As well as placing a legal, statutory responsibility for safety on the operators, we also need a political commitment to fund the operators and that must be acknowledged in the Bill.

The issue of overcrowding has been raised by almost every speaker today. It is a major issue. I was interviewed recently on Today FM and was asked my opinion on safety belts on buses. To be honest, it had not struck me before, but it obviously arose in the context of the tragic accident in County Meath. The conditions that apply in DART trains every weekday morning, in commuter trains around Dublin and in the mainline trains leaving Dublin after 3 p.m. on Friday can be awful. A few years ago I was returning from Galway, having attended a funeral there. A woman got on the train in Loughrea. We were standing in the area between two carriages because there was nowhere else to stand. She asked the ticket collector if she would get a discount, given the fact that she could not get a seat. The collector shrugged. He was obviously used to getting a certain amount of abuse every week. It is the norm and widely accepted by those who use intercity trains on Fridays that the standard of accommodation is awful. If one does not get on the train at the terminus, one will not get a seat. This is intolerable.

I appreciate there is a difficulty in providing a large amount of rolling stock, which is not used during the week, simply to provide adequate services at the weekends. However, the issue must be addressed because if there is an accident some day, it will be made so much worse by virtue of the overcrowding. Questions will then be put to the Minister of State, or to his successor, as to why he did not deal with this issue. Again, this comes down to resources. We need to provide the rolling stock for Iarnród Éireann in order to ensure that it can provide proper and safe services on Fridays. If that means that we have to limit ——