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The section of track where the breakdown occurred would appear to be common to 5 lines: Dublin to Cork, Galway, Limerick, Tralee and Westport.
It would be interesting to understand how much more quickly the locomotive might have been cleared if the network was privatised, seeing as it's on the cards anyway. I suspect compensation would be due by the company operating the offending train to the network operator and / or other company's operating trains stuck behind (who have to pay compensation to passengers). This motivating force would seem like one of the beneficial sides to privatisation to me.
Anyone know how similar situations are handled in the UK?
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A good estimate of the failure was at 13.40, a locomotive should of been readily available so lets say you allow 15 minutes to see if it's a minor fault so realistically the driver of the 14.00 to Cork should of been sent (if not others spare) and hauled the train back into the center line at Kildare, if IE got themselves together full services should of resumed at 15.00. IE have been capable in the past of removing freight failures in the same area with 1.5 hours.
In the UK rail operators are fined for delays/failures and time taken. Only on the news this evening Network Rail were fined 2 million in the last year because operators were forced to cancel or delay services. Worth noting the majority of trains in the UK are DMU's and the HST services can run on one engine so I expect full failures are not a major issue + lots of lines interconnect to make things easier.