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Staff numbers are not the problem, its allocation and productivity of those staff
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There is room for reduction however it would require IE to receive at least 10 million to remove lots of manual LC around the network, there is still a big number. There must be 100 if not more staff being held onto because of this. Agree productivity is a problem in some areas however I think its slowly starting to improve.
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Are you comparing like with like though? Would I be correct in assuming that East Coast is primarily an inter-city operator and the average journey length of those 19 million would be of the order of 100 miles. The bulk of Irish Rail's operation is DART and commuter which probably has an overall average journey length of around 15 miles. This would probably give an average yield per passenger of somewhere between 5 and 10 times that of Irish Rail given the higher cost of rail travel in the UK.
Also, by comparison in Ireland, most of the trains would be a lot more heavily staffed. A typical Sligo-line train has two staff members (driver and trolley-pusher) and with a ticket collector added for maybe half of the journey. It's been a while since I took a long-distance train in the UK, but I understand that they still operate with a couple of catering staff, a train host and a ticket checker and would generally provide a full meal service.
I'll give you that the fact that track maintenance isn't included either but don't Irish Rail contract a lot of this out nowadays?
The 100k staff members is a bit of a sideshow really - paying an engineering graduate with 25 or 30 years experience 100k isn't really a major problem. She'd probably get twice or three times that running projects in Dubai.
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It's being a while since I used EC in UK but general intercity trains have the driver, the host who is the guard/ticket checker. Catering staff depend but numbers would be up to 4 or 5 on peak business services.
Here in Ireland on certain Cork, Galway, Limerick and Tralee services there is 2 if not 3 on some FC services that offer meals. Belfast has higher numbers on all services. In the UK FC traffic is big money and generally at least 2 coaches so it justifies the extra staff but over here its very limited. Might add food is much better on services in UK.
Yes East Coast is mainly IC traffic but as you say much higher fares and the fact ALL passengers pay helps, that's the problem with IE's cost base. Staffing costs and most things are probably lower in the UK to.
I don't believe IE contract a lot of it out, possibly for bigger projects that require lots of people to complete in a quick timescale but generally its completed in house.