Litany of complaints lodged over antisocial behaviour on Cork trains

Information provided to The Echo has revealed a litany of complaints about antisocial behaviour on trains reported to Iarnród Eireann last summer.

The information, provided on foot of a freedom of information request, revealed how one complaint, on behalf of a young woman, said a man was sitting in her booked first class seat.

“She asked him to move, he did but then got abusive saying she was a ‘posh bitch’ and her daddy had bought the ticket.”

The person said the man “continued making abusive comments for his journey and being aggressive and intimidating,” before getting off the train at Charleville.

Another person said a large group of teenagers were drinking alcohol, standing on tables and even smoking cannabis weed on the train after the ploughing match.

Dangerous and disgusting

“I actually cannot believe how dangerous and disgusting the train from Dublin Heuston to Cork Kent is,” the person wrote.

“It looks like approximately 100 drunk teenagers got on the train at Portarlington and have spent the entire journey standing on chairs and tables screaming and shouting and banging the ceiling.”

“They’re openly drinking out of glass bottles (and mixing drinks in plastic ones) as well as doing shots in the middle of the carriage. I saw one light up a joint and just smoke it in the middle of the carriage.

“Not to mention having to listen to them screaming things like ‘I’d rather be a pa*i than a prod’.”

The person said they would never normally complain about anything but they “feel so unsafe surrounded by drunk teenagers holding hurleys and screaming.

“I’ve seen security on the trains plenty of times but apparently none was needed when you knew the train was going to be overbooked with a school going to the Ploughing?

“I have another hour and a half of this and I could actually cry, it’s torture. If you experienced 10 minutes of this you would feel the same way.”

Shouting and punching

Another said that a group of six young men aged between 13 and 15 started shouting and punching one another.

“They then produced water pistols and proceeded to spray water at each other, myself, and other commuters.”

Another passenger detailed racist abuse of train staff, saying that as they passed through the carriage a man was saying “two jabs and that will do them and we can just fu*k them off the train”.

One women wrote that throughout a whole journey from Dublin to Cork, “a number of passengers spewed homophobic comments while drinking heavily between carriages”. 

“This made myself and my partner feel very unsafe as a lesbian couple,” she said, criticising the lack of intervention by train staff.