Irish Railway Safety Scandal

Collapsed Broadmeadow Viaduct

Irish Railways have always had a bit of a Noddy status suffering from a toxic mixture of neglect and confused pork barrel politics. The neglect resulted in the system being starved of meaningful investment for years and gaining a negative public perception for shabby crowded trains particularly at peak times. I remember standing in a 40 year old coach from Mullingar to Dublin where the floor was the ashtray for a carriage full of chain smokers. Over the past 50 years a number of lines have closed to passenger services and gone into that euphemistic state “In the care of the Chief Engineer.” More seriously railways have been justified on social grounds with bottomless subsidies given as a PSO (Public Service Obligation) and pensioners, irrespective of means given the “right” to free unlimited rail travel. Well, as Ireland has certainly found out recently, there is no such thing as a free lunch and somebody has had to pay for “free travel.”

The confusion in policy is very apparent on routes such as Dublin / Galway where the Irish state pays a subsidy on the rail trip, the bus trip (By the state bus monopoly) and on the flight (110 miles!) on Aer Arann. Whilst paying subsidies unnecessarily on competing links it has also improved the roads so much that it is quicker to drive from Dublin to Galway than go by train – Irish Rail no longer uses the shorter direct route to Galway to save on maintenance. Their operating standards have always been a cause for concern. When I was at college a friend of mine, who was studying engineering, worked for Irish Railways for the summer. He was somewhat incredulous to find when he inspected the newly installed pneumatic signals south of Pearse St. Station that they were now in fact hydraulic signals! – the bleed valves had not been opened and the compressed air tubes which operated the points had filled with water!



Last time I went by train from Dublin to Limerick I had checked at the ticket office that there was a First Class service on the next morning’s train. In going to Heuston Station in Dublin the next morning I had to stop three times to show my ticket BEFORE getting on the train and went into the First Class Carriage to be greeted with the well practiced words before I even sat down “You know there is no First Class on this train, they’ll refund the difference on your ticket!” Indeed a lot of use a refund in 2 months by way of a euro cheque would have been to me in the UK. I told him I had checked the night before so why was there no First Class. Quick as anything he replied “Staff Shortages.” I then had the surreal experience of spending the whole 3 hour trip to Limerick as the only person in First Class apart from THREE Irish rail staff who spent the entire trip listening to a Gaelic Football final on a radio! It seemed like a shortage of motivated staff. Indeed there is strict demarcation on Irish Rail as I noticed once on the Belfast Train when the staff had to break into the buffet as the “catering staff” had not opened it. Every year on some pretext the Train Drivers hold customers to ransom by going on strike to protect their lack of productivity and restrictive practices which would be laughed at in the commercial world. Go into www.irishrail.ie/ now and they will still take money off you for weekend services timetabled as First Class (Premium in Irish rail Speak) at weekends where there will be no such service. There is no concept of a “Train Manager” multi-tasking and ensuring joined up service is delivered to the customer on Irish Rail.

But more serious than the lack of customer focus and the free ride at the taxpayers’ expense are the safety lapses. On the main line to Belfast just 10 miles north of Dublin the Broadmeadow viaduct, which runs over open water in north Dublin, collapsed into the sea last Friday despite being passed as safe following two inspections by Irish Rail engineers. The company last night stood by its inspection regime, defending a decision to pass the structure as safe despite being told by the Malahide Sea Scouts (Hi Lo!) that one of the supporting piers was damaged. It has also emerged that the pier that collapsed, causing the viaduct to fall into the water, will not be rebuilt. Instead, engineers will strengthen the line.


Irish Passenger Rail Network

Critical railway safety checks have not been carried out for the past three years because the Irish Railway safety watchdog does not have enough staff. The Railway Safety Commission (RSC) was established under the Railway Safety Act 2005 on the back of EU legislation requiring each member state to have a national railway safety authority. And Irish Rail admitted last night that its inspection regime -covering more than 1,200 bridges - would need to be reviewed after one of the busiest rail lines in the country collapsed into the sea last week.

The RSC had warned about a lack of inspectors since it began operations in 2006. It said this "lack of resources" prevented it from "devoting the time we would wish" to safety checks. It had just four inspectors responsible for almost 2,000km of rail line and hundreds of bridges until this year. Only in 2009 could it recruit an additional three inspectors, bringing the total employed to seven. It revealed that it was too busy approving new rail projects to carry out planned safety checks, and it was only able to recruit its full complement of safety inspectors this year. The RSC is charged with ensuring Irish Rail and other operators perform to the highest safety standards, but last night it emerged that just half the necessary staff were in place to cope with the huge workload of checking safety systems. The RSC began operations on January 1, 2006. It is responsible for safety on the entire rail network, including heavy rail and tram systems. It currently employs seven inspectors - three of whom were only appointed this year. The commission has four primary tasks including safety approval, which assesses if new infrastructure or rolling stock is fit for purpose. It is also responsible for safety auditing and monitoring, safety enforcement and investigations. Auditing and monitoring has included studies on the safety of level crossings, emergency escapes at stations and bridge-protection warning systems. The RSC has warned in all three of its annual reports that it has committed less time to compliance auditing "than we would have wished".



And it emerged:

The collapse of the rail viaduct over Broadmeadow estuary in north Co Dublin last Friday evening might have been a disaster, causing significant loss of life. A commuter train had just passed over it minutes earlier and another would have followed but for the alertness of driver, Keith Farrelly, who raised the alarm when he noticed the bridge starting to collapse as his train was crossing it.

That is how close we came to a real human tragedy on Irish railways. Amazingly, it transpired that the 180 metre-long viaduct had been inspected just three days beforehand and no evidence of any defect was reported to Iarnród Éireann. Yet after one of its support piers had crumbled, the State railway company was able to say there was “little doubt” that tidal scouring was a factor in the incident.

Rail Users Ireland spokesman Mark Gleeson rightly suggested that what happened raises serious questions about the maintenance and inspection regime on Ireland’s rail network – and not for the first time. After the derailment of a cement train caused the partial collapse of the Cahir viaduct in Co Tipperary, the Railway Safety Commission found “serious deficiencies” in Iarnród Éireann’s management of its infrastructure, and concluded in its 2006 report that these critical shortcomings in the company’s inspection and maintenance regime “were principally responsible for the accident”. The number of passengers carried on the line that runs through Cahir from Limerick Junction to Rosslare is minuscule compared to the 20,000 passengers per day using Dublin’s northern commuter line or the Belfast Enterprise express.


Iarnród Éireann’s Logo

But serious questions have been raised over how a supposedly 'safe' bridge could fall into the sea after two inspections. There are also concerns about safety on the network, especially as the Railway Safety Programme was extended from five to seven years in an effort to reduce costs in last year's Budget. Ensuring that bridges, viaducts, rail lines, level crossings and all other pieces of rail infrastructure are safe is a key plank of the RSC's brief. Last year, it also approved 57 infrastructure projects, ranging from construction of new bridges to approval of Luas extensions, which led to it postponing inspections.


Broadmeadow Viaduct

"The number of railway projects that required RSC approval meant that we were able to commit less time to performance auditing and monitoring than we would have wished," it warned in its 2008 report. A safety management system is only as effective as its implementation. Assessing the railway undertakings' safety case compliance is an essential part of the RSC's work but lack of resources has, in the past, prevented us devoting the time we would wish to this task."

Fine Gael's Transport spokesman Fergus O'Dowd said that the Railway Safety Programme had seen its funding cut, and that there was a "lack of accountability" in relation to the Broadmeadow inquiry. "They're the regulator of the industry and the guarantor of safety on the trains. I would be very concerned," he said. Under the Railway Safety Act 2005, Irish Rail is required to commission an independent audit of its safety management system every four years. The next audit is scheduled for 2010. It will consider if inspections of the Broadmeadow viaduct were regular enough, and if an underwater survey of the pier should have been conducted. Irish Rail and the RSC are also expected to appear before the Dail Transport Committee next month to answer questions about safety.


Irish Rail Class 22000

What is particularly disgraceful about the state of Irish Rail is that it has had ten years worth of European Union and taxpayer funded largesse and has spent money on high end capital projects and new equipment without even looking at the fundamental business cases for such expenditure or indeed reinforcing its basic operating discipline or customer focus in that time. Indeed it has dreamt up more grandiose schemes such as the 3 Bn Euro Dublin underground Interconnector to connect Heuston to Connolly Station even though they are already linked by Rail. Such is the Government’s lack of faith in Irish Rail that they bypassed them for the Dublin Light rail and proposed Metro system with the result that a separate Quango has now come up with totally disconnected and grandiose schemes for these. In Ireland they say “It’s an ill horse which blows no wind” and hopefully the collapse of the Celtic Tiger will ultimately result in more realistic Public transport policies and a safer system?


Collapsed Broadmeadow Viaduct