Railway Safety Bill 2026: Second Stage Dail Éireann — 2026-10-01 ============================================================ Thomas Gould (SF), Cork North-Central The National Bus and Rail Union has described the Cork to Dublin train as a hotspot of antisocial behaviour in recent years. There have been 120 complaints of antisocial behaviour on trains to and from Cork in the last 12 months. I thank The Echo newspaper in Cork and Amy Campbell for her work in highlighting this. These incidents include times where people feel unsafe, intimidated and scared. There is no way to exit a train once it is moving. Volatile behaviour can be particularly scary for people travelling by train when they are next to a person who is behaving like this. There need to be clear rules and legislation to protect people on trains. The trains are packed. They are full of families and younger and older people who need to feel safe on trains. I appreciate there are some positive aspects to the Bill, but in reality we need real funding to introduce transport police and keep people on trains safe. Having said that, I want to take a moment to commend those working on the railways. I get the train every week from Cork to Dublin and back again. The staff are excellent, especially in Kent Station. I know a lot of the staff personally and they take the job very seriously. They are very understanding and accommodating to people. In Cork, we have taken particular care in recognising the importance of the railway station, named Kent Station after Volunteer Thomas Kent who was executed for his role in the 1916 Rising. The staff have done huge work to commemorate and remember Thomas Kent. His bust is maintained immaculately. It is a great reminder for those in Cork and those visiting of our history. I would like the Minister to engage with Kent Station and other railway stations to see what more could be done to remember Thomas Kent and educate people. We have a proud history. The workers would engage with the Minister because they are very proud to have the station named after Thomas Kent. While Kent Station will always be the main railway station in Cork, there are now planning applications for two new stations in my constituency. They are welcome, but we need them to be delivered quickly. They will open up travel to huge parts of the population in Cork, but they should be delivered alongside park-and-ride facilities in Blackpool and Glanmire, which are needed so that people can use the new stations. I would love to see the stations continue in the proud tradition of Kent Station and be named after Cork's patriot dead. Delaney station should be considered as a name for the Kilbarry station. It would be a fitting reminder of the Delaney brothers, who were executed in their beds the night of the burning of Cork. The Dunkettle station is another substation. The First Cork Brigade, many of whom are railway workers, used the railway lines in Glanmire to transport messages and ammunition during the War of Independence. Commemorating and preserving our history should go hand in hand with progress. The new railway stations are welcome and it is progress. More and more people want to use the train. They want to be able to access trains, but the reality for many people in my constituency is that there are no trains or the train service is infrequent. We need a significant increase in the frequency of the trains to Mallow. More and more people are using the train to commute to and from work in Cork city, and that should be encouraged. We want to get people out of their cars, hit our climate targets and reduce emissions. They should be able to socialise in the city and get a train home. That is why we would like more trains running at later hours. The last train to Cork out of Dublin is at 9 p.m., which means many people use their cars to travel to Dublin, which causes emissions. I ask the Minister to consider extending the train service to Cork, especially at the weekend. Expanding train services to Cork would connect every other station on the line to a better and more frequent service and increase access. I engage with Iarnród Éireann when there are big events in Dublin and Cork teams are playing. They tell me every carriage is being used and every bus is being used by Bus Éireann. We need to increase capacity so that people can get to those events. The best way to do that is by train. I ask the Minister to consider whether it is possible to add additional train services at night. The purpose of the Bill is ensuring trains are safe. Services do not exist at the moment. Until 1973 there was a daily Cork to Youghal service. In the 1970s, the service was reduced to the summer months and weekends. There is now a train service to Midleton, halfway to Youghal. That should go all the way to Youghal. Many people think Youghal is a destination for people who are going to the beach and tourism, and it is, but a significant number of people live in east Cork and work in Cork city, Ringaskiddy and Little Island. That is why we need the train service to be reinstated. There is no greenway on the tracks at the moment, but I think it is possible to have both. Workers in east Cork and people travelling need a train service. During the summer months, there are a large number of cars travelling the roads to east Cork and a railway line that has not been used for years. It is shocking to see the lack of foresight on the part of Governments who ripped up railway lines right across the country. I want more people to travel by rail. The Minister mentioned light rail. There is a light rail plan for Cork, from east to west, but nothing from north to south. This is a fundamental flaw. The Minister might say the Government does not have the money to deliver that now, but it needs to be planned. If it cannot be delivered right now, the Government at least needs to plan for it. There is no planning to connect light rail to the airport. Where is the connectivity when we are trying to get people from the northside to the southside? There are many areas such as Mahon Point, Carrigaline and Douglas and Ballyvolane and Blarney on the northside of Cork city, which are not served by public transport. People cannot depend on buses, which means they then get into cars. We want more people to use public transport. We support many aspects of the Bill, but there is nothing in it about investment and delivering better public transport. That is what we would like to see from this Government. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-10-01/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:01:00+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-10-01