Good news for Sligo 29000 haters.

[Mark Gleeson]

To be precise

To lease and reguage existing UK stock is expensive and to be honest most of it is horribly unreliable, the modifications required are depending on type quite significant

To sign a lease and for Adtranz in Derby to then build a batch suitably modified at assembly time costs a little or nothing over the normal price.

In reality UK lessors have no interest here since if IE terminate the lease they have no other potential customer (NIR can't lease). Its all academic now since money doesn't appear to be a issue, current IE tenders seem to hint at possibly leasing from the manufacturer or making them responsible for maintenance to off load a element of risk.

The only thing leased in a real sense where the Ammonia tankers, and the Tara Mines wagons are actually owned by Tara Mines