One in five complaints about Cork train behaviour related to match attendees

Iarnród Éireann has said that additional security resources will be put in place for specific events, as almost one in five complaints about antisocial behaviour on Cork trains related to passengers attending a match.

Yesterday, The Echo revealed there were complaints about drinking, drug use, smoking, vaping, violence, abusive behaviour, and sexual abuse as well as shouting, playing videos or music loudly, and singing made by passengers on trains to and from Cork over the past year.

A total of 18% of the complaints — provided to The Echo on foot of a Freedom of Information request — mentioned that the people perpetrating the antisocial behaviour were travelling to or from a match.

National Bus and Rail Union general secretary Dermot O’Leary told The Echo: 

“Our members are at the end of their tether, saying they are afraid to go to work in the morning, and there’s certain trains they don’t want to travel on.”

A spokesperson for Iarnród Éireann told The Echo that it has measures in place, stating: “As a societal issue to which we are not immune, we have a range of proactive and preventative measures and response measures in place to address antisocial behaviour, working with our own team, our private security contractors, and An Garda Síochána.

“Intercity services, such as Dublin to Cork, all have customer service personnel on board to whom customers can raise issues of concern. 

"Additionally, we have established with the gardaí a network of rapid-response hubs, which allows our staff to directly contact key garda locations should assistance be required. Proactive joint patrols with gardaí also take place weekly.

“We have consistently expanded security resources in recent years to give greater visibility and to both deter and respond to issues that arise.

“We will also put additional resources towards specific events, and have proactive joint security measures and patrols in place with gardaí, such as for the summer events season.

“The vast majority of the 50.1m journeys on our network (including over 3m on the Dublin-to-Cork line) take place without incident.”