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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