Poor Treatment of West of Ireland Commuters by Iranrod Eireann

It has come to my attention that a consequence of the new high speed Cork to Dublin train service, which was announced by Iranrod Eireann in the past week, is that the Westport to Dublin service will now be arriving at Heuston Station 10 minutes later from now on. While the new service on the Cork line is welcome, this is very bad news for commuters from the West. It is absurdly short notice for passengers on the Westport service (and others) whose employers are expecting them to be in work at their normal time. In the past the CEO of Iranrod Eireann made a limp commitment to revising the timetables in order to sort out the chronic tardiness of the evening Heuston-Westport service. I can only assume that there was a timetable revision in order to add this new Cork-Heuston morning service. The evening issue could have been resolved with this too. The treatment of commuters on the Westport line is an outrage and I’d like to remind Iranrod Eireann, which is heavily dependent on subsidies from the taxpayer, that there are more people using their services than those living in Dublin and Cork. I am writing to them today to express my disappointment in the strongest terms possible at this latest turn of events.