Railway Safety Bill 2026: Second Stage Dail Éireann — 2026-10-01 ============================================================ Paula Butterly (FG), Louth Before I begin, I too offer my sympathies to the Doyle family. The loss of a child is always devastating. I welcome the Bill. Safety on our tracks and level crossings is always paramount. I will focus my contribution on two points, which concern the safety on our trains and platforms. The first is about overcrowding. We are fortunate in County Louth as we have seen an increase in services between Dublin and Belfast. We will see the introduction of new carriages that will transport more than 400 people per service. We have seen more frequency, with services running 15 times per day between Dublin and Belfast. All of that is to be welcomed. As is said, "when you build it, they will come" and the trains are now overcrowded. People are huddled together at every point in the day and, at some stages, particularly in the summer when it was hot, people with conditions like asthma were struggling to breathe. It is not just on the carriages, but also on the platforms. Drogheda station is full to capacity. There is nowhere to park and when people are rushing for a train at 6 a.m. or 7 a.m. and desperately trying to find a car parking space, they start to get het up and stressed and that can lead to incidents. There are incidents on the platform because people are huddled together trying to get onto and off a crowded train. That safety issue has to be addressed and I have the solution. It is a solution I have spoken about again and again. It is the introduction of a new station in north Drogheda. The population is there and the housing is there and we will have an increased population, with more than 7,000 houses being built in the coming years. A train station in north Drogheda is absolutely vital. It needs to take people away from the platforms and car parks in Drogheda and get them onto a new platform and into a new car park in north Drogheda. In Dundalk, it is the same situation. The car park is absolutely jammed. We need more space for more cars. These services have been of huge benefit to County Louth. These services are getting people out of their cars and onto trains but, as a result, we once again have crowded platforms and crowded trains. As has been said, we are introducing new carriages and will have new seats but we need people to be able to get on that platform safely. I have another solution for the Minister of State, the introduction of a train station in the mid-Louth area. This would serve not just the people of County Louth but also a lot of people in counties Meath, Monaghan and Cavan who do not have the facility or luxury of being able to get a train. In a recent parliamentary question, I asked the Minister to fund and carry out a feasibility study. Everybody on the ground knows that this is feasible and that the demand is there but we need to prove it with hard facts and evidence. I once again ask the Minister to provide funding for a feasibility study. On my second point regarding safety on our trains and platforms, one of the key commitments in the programme for Government is to introduce a transport security force. While the numbers seem quite low, there were 50 incidents of sexual offences on trains in 2025. That number seems quite low but these are the people - teenagers, children and primarily women - who have actually made a report to Iarnród Éireann. Who knows how many have been in similar circumstances and have disembarked from a train without saying anything, despite going home shaken and traumatised by the event? It is a key priority in the programme for Government. When are we going to introduce the primary legislation to make this happen? People going to work need to be able to travel safely. We continue to advocate for stronger measures to be brought in for anyone who commits any sort of sexual offence against a child, teenager, woman or man. Only yesterday, we walked out for women. Men and women of the Oireachtas stood together and walked out to say that violence and abuse towards women has to stop. We have that commitment. I would like to know when it is going to be fulfilled. There is no place for any woman, child or teenager to be abused on a train, on a bus, at a station, on a platform or in a car park. I would like the Minister of State to respond to that. --- 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