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sit. It feels good to Geico. The last word with life pharmacy over 100 local pharmacies nationwide
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that are always here to help life pharmacy live better together. You're welcome back. It is
1:11
Will O'Callion in for Maccuper. Now Irish Rail is increasing security patrols on board its services
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after drug use and decent exposure, racial abuse, physical violence and drunken behavior reported
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by train passengers in the last year. There was more than 1,000 alerts, which were sent to the
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company's anti-social behavior tech service during the year of 2025 and reported instance
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included passengers who were brandishing knives and weapons and drug users who were shooting up
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in carriages as well. We've got Jane Kriegen who's deputy corporate communications manager
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Irish Rail with us. Jane, welcome to the program. Hi, Will. How are you? When we're looking at
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security and what's required and myself or a regular train user up and down commuting into the
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city, there's quite a few instances here. Obviously, like we're looking at over a thousand alerts and
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I realize that not all of those alerts would necessarily be escalated or need to be dealt with,
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but it sounds like there is quite a bit of a dangerous behavior happening on trains right now.
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What I would say is one instance is one too many. But if you look at the numbers in the overall
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context, last year we'd 55 million passenger journeys and we had just 1,150
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text alerts. Now, each one of those are very, very insuriousness from assaults and abuse to things
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like playing loud music or being onto the influence of drink or drugs. Now, all of these things,
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you know, shouldn't be happening. And I suppose I would say that it's not just a train traveler
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indeed, a public transport issue. It's a societal issue where people's behaviour at times cannot
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be good, but the majority of the time that you would travel with us in a there wouldn't you would
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never see an instance of anti-social behaviour, but it's very distressing for anyone who's witnessed
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to or indeed victim of such an instance. So, sometimes the ones that I've witnessed first hand,
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part of the problem would be that the train staff who are on right now are reasonably powerless
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when it comes to this. I've been on trains where they've had to call the Guaradi and we wait until
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the next stop and then maybe an instant gets dealt with by the Guaradi when they get there. Again,
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that frustrates people because the train has to stop and so on and so forth as well. But generally,
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those who are going up and down the general train staff who are attending their reasonably
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powerless when it comes to some of these really serious incidents that we're talking about here.
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No, you're correct. I mean, they don't have powers of arrest or they don't have jurisdiction
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over those kind of instances. That's why they do call the Guaradi and we have rapid response hubs
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throughout the country where our my colleagues can call the Guaradi if the situation is serious and
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they need to be called. And then, you know, we've much improved response times since we started
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the rapid response hubs. We also have joined patrols regularly between ourselves and the Guaradi
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on board trains and at stations to raise awareness of the issue of anti-social behavior.
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As you said at the start to your piece there, we have additional funding from the NTA this year
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to provide more security patrols on board our services and at our stations. So, are we ever
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going to eradicate anti-social behavior? No, but we're doing everything we can to try to minimize
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the instances of us. Is there a possibility of extending the amount of,
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effectively what I'm going to call, security on the trains? Because sometimes you're coming back
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from a concert or from a game where later trains are put on and there will be two or three security
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who are walking up and down the aisles. And even just the fact that their presence is there is
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a deterrent to some of this behavior that we're reading in the report. Is there a possibility this
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could maybe be rolled out in a wider basis then? So, at times of matches and concerts and festivals,
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we would be mindful that there could be more instances of anti-social behavior. So, you know,
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we would have increased security at those times, but is it practical that we would have security
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on every train? It isn't, you know, and I don't know if it's needed either, as I said, the vast
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majority of passenger journeys pass off peacefully with no anti-social behavior. Is there a possibility,
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though, because I've spoken to some of the station masters at train stations up and going back to
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where they've said that one of the big deterrents about having later trains which are available
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to go across country is the fact that there's no security in terms of those services because they
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feel like they could be a time where there could be issues. Again, could that possibly not if this
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was available open up more services down the line? Well, we do, for our late-night services at Christmas
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a new year, all of those services would have security on them because of the nature of the late-night
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travel, but I suppose it's not as simple to provide more late-night intercity travel, for example,
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because we would carry out line maintenance works overnight, so it was not to disrupt services
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during the day. So, you know, our scope to provide more late-night services would be limited,
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and because the fact we use that time to maintain the railway. Okay, my thanks to Jane Creak and
5:51
Joy, is there from Irish Rail? The last word. With life pharmacy, over 100 local pharmacies nationwide
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that are always here to help life pharmacy live better together.