[zag]

It seems crazy that the setup is continuing without some official statement from IE and/or the drivers explaining what the 'plan' is. By plan I mean something that can be relied upon to deliver the scheduled services with as near to 100% reliability as can be expected.

If I understand it correctly, IE have scheduled more trains (good) but without providing for an increase in the number of drivers (bad). The shortfall is expected/hoped by IE to be made up by some drivers working their rostered days off. This is potentially a viable very-short-term solution which might work if the drivers are willing to do it. But they're not willing to do it and I don't blame them. It will also involve the drivers getting increased compensation in terms of further days off or overtime payments.

In the medium term IE need to get it into gear and recruit more drivers. Or else reduce the timetabled trains to a sustainable level.

They are doing nobody any favours by saying "look at our shiney new timetable, more trains, better, faster, etc . . ." and then not being able to deliver on the promise.

I don't take intercity trains very often, but if I turned up for the last train to somewhere and found out they had cancelled it because there was no driver available (and they didn't reasonably expect their to be a driver available) I would be very, very, very annoyed with them. It's very poor customer service to schedule these trains without adequate resources to back the schedule up.

z