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Originally Posted by Mark Gleeson
Listened to it and its not clear
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The Dublin-Belfast train has been hijacked before, but this has to be one of the lowest depths of rail history in Ireland.
I don't care what side of the religious fence people sit on, or how they feel about parades in Northern Ireland. I'm not interested in history lessons or how oppressed they feel, there are not enough words to describe how appalling the incident this week is.
The Enterprise service is one of the rail network's best services. The trains are clean, the carriages are comfortable, the service is one of the most reliable in the network. But this is currently a bad time for rail transport in Ireland. Last year, a major viaduct collapsed and suspended services for 3 months, leading to colossal loss of revenues, we're just about to have a line closed, fares are climbing, while competing modes of transport in Ireland are getting faster and cheaper.
No "cause" political or otherwise, would have been advanced or resisted had even more damage occurred this week. Mass murder was miraculously averted, but the individuals responsible should have the full weight of the law thrown at them. There is no room in civilised society for those who indiscriminately terrorise 60 innocent rail passengers for no reason. If they get away with their actions, it's only a matter of time before it happens again on trains or even north-south bus services.
The incident this week had nothing to do with parades, it had nothing to do with politics, it had nothing to do with terrorism. It was vandalism for vandalism's sake. Pure and simple. The only solution is to deploy police forces from both sides of the border on the service around this date in the future, to calm the concerns of passengers. Gardai on the Irish side of the border and the PSNI on the other side. The financial impact is immaterial. Every precaution has to be taken to prevent what happened this week ever happening again.
