Free Travel for Over 65s on Irish Rail

[Eddie]

I wonder if the luxury that our senior citizens enjoy of having free train travel ought to be questioned in the light of:
- the recent additional subvention required to CIE
- the fact that the country is broke
- that Irish state pensions are very generous compared to other European countries
- that Irish pensioners are probably sharing little of the pain that the working population is in the form of tax hikes and welfare cutbacks
- that, as I understand it, Irish pensioners get other perks eg free electricity, telephone rental, medical cover
- that, as I understand it, UK senior citizens have to buy a senior citizen railcard to get just a third off train fares

I would hope that if fares equivalent to a discount of say 67% - 75% on adult fares would still make travelling by train very competitive whilst also giving the opportunity to our senior citizens to contribute towards their non-zero running costs. Concessionary child fares are falling firmly at the feet of the hard hit working population, who are also subsidising in full (along with the various bailout funds) the free travel available to their parents.

I don't expect to win a popularity contest over this post, but clearly their are more tax increases and spending cutbacks coming soon, and the burdan will need to be shared across a wider portion of the population.