James Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I mark International Day of the Girl and welcome all the girls in the Gallery. It is appropriate that it is nearly all girls who are here this morning. My issue has been raised by a female constituent, though not alone as many others have raised it too. On 3 September, Iarnród Éireann decided to change its timetables and since then has become utterly unreliable. It used to be a service one could set a clock by and we were very proud of our commuter train service but, in the past month, it has been reliable in only one aspect, which is that it is continually late. This is causing commuters from Balbriggan, Skerries, Rush, Lusk and Donabate to miss meetings in town and children to have to wait until late to be picked up from their crèches.

It is a cause of great anger to people living in Fingal that they pay their taxes and their fares, which are more expensive than DART fares, yet they are late. One ludicrous excuse I was given was that it was because of leaves on the line. We are very proud of our parks, our trees and our countryside in Fingal but we are pretty certain there are trees and parks on the south side of the city too and we do not see any problem there or on the west side. I was asked to raise this issue by my constituents and Councillor Tom O'Leary, who has also had numerous emails. The problem is caused by congestion on the line with DART trains and the fact that the commuter train is not given precedence, which means people are regularly ten or 11 minutes late. That means a 30- minute journey becomes a 40 minute or a 41 minute journey, which is a 33% increase in the time of travel. It makes getting connections in town unreliable and means that it is difficult to make commitments.We have a huge amount of people who want to use public transport who do serious business. We have people working in Google, we have solicitors, barristers and all sorts of businesspeople and other people who have commitments in town. These people cannot make plans because the trains have become utterly unreliable since 3 September.

I urge the Leader to ask the Minister to contact Iarnród Éireann and find out what the problem is. If the Minister cannot get the matter corrected then he needs to come into this House, take his portfolio and responsibilities seriously and explain to us why commuters in Dublin north, Fingal, are being discommoded in this fashion.