Committee Reports > List of Committees > Joint > 1979 > Committee on Commercial State-Sponsored Bodies > Report No. 04 - Córas Iompar Éireann

APPENDIX 10

LETTER TO CLERK TO JOINT COMMITTEE FROM CONSUMERS’ ASSOCIATION OF IRELAND LTD.

This Association wishes to make the following observations on the operation of CIE:—

General.

CIE does not appear to be fulfilling its mandate to provide “reasonable, economic, and efficient transport services”. Its services should be regarded as necessary social services and the obligation on the company to pay its way should be waived when incompatible with this.

It should have a user council, with powers to discuss every aspect of its operations. The passenger representatives on this should be people who regularly use buses and trains.

Long-distance trains.

CIE offers frequent enticements to the public to use these, but the connecting public transport is often discouraging; e.g. if one uses a provincial bus to come into Cork for the train one is deposited a good ten minutes’ walk from the station, not attractive if one has any type of heavy luggage. Refreshment facilities could be a great deal better on most of the trains; the full meals are dear and the accommodation for eating them very cramped. The long-distance bus terminus in Dublin should be connected to the railway stations and the city centre by a shuttle bus service.

The destinations on the buses should be in English as well as Irish for the benefit of visitors who cannot be expected to know that “Port Lairge” is Waterford, for instance.

The company should be given money to update their rolling stock on the suburban railway lines. “Commuter” trains should run later in the evenings. Stations such as Hazelhatch, Co. Dublin and Kilcoole, Co. Wicklow, near where there are a number of new houses, should be re-opened for commuter traffic.

Suburban Buses.

Even when there is no industrial dispute the Dublin suburban buses rarely adhere to schedules. We appreciate that traffic causes delays as it builds up, but this does not explain the frequent non-arrival of early morning buses (between 8 and 8.30 hrs.) at their suburban termini. There is a certain air of indiscipline among the crews. On the other hand the management do not seem to be faultless in the matter of industrial relations; it is hard to see how they arrived at paying a man a basic £52 or so a week for driving a bus back and forth across Dublin in 1979.

There should be better services to hospitals in and outside cities, to facilitate visitors and out-patients.

Time-tables of local services in centres other than Dublin should be readily available; it requires great ingenuity to get hold of the local bus timetable in the station in Galway, for example.

18 April, 1979.