Irish Rail To Increase Security After Increase In Anti-Social Behaviour

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Will O'Callion in for Maccuper. Now Irish Rail is increasing security patrols on board its services

after drug use and decent exposure, racial abuse, physical violence and drunken behavior reported

by train passengers in the last year. There was more than 1,000 alerts, which were sent to the

company's anti-social behavior tech service during the year of 2025 and reported instance

included passengers who were brandishing knives and weapons and drug users who were shooting up

in carriages as well. We've got Jane Kriegen who's deputy corporate communications manager

Irish Rail with us. Jane, welcome to the program. Hi, Will. How are you? When we're looking at

security and what's required and myself or a regular train user up and down commuting into the

city, there's quite a few instances here. Obviously, like we're looking at over a thousand alerts and

I realize that not all of those alerts would necessarily be escalated or need to be dealt with,

but it sounds like there is quite a bit of a dangerous behavior happening on trains right now.

What I would say is one instance is one too many. But if you look at the numbers in the overall

context, last year we'd 55 million passenger journeys and we had just 1,150

text alerts. Now, each one of those are very, very insuriousness from assaults and abuse to things

like playing loud music or being onto the influence of drink or drugs. Now, all of these things,

you know, shouldn't be happening. And I suppose I would say that it's not just a train traveler

indeed, a public transport issue. It's a societal issue where people's behaviour at times cannot

be good, but the majority of the time that you would travel with us in a there wouldn't you would

never see an instance of anti-social behaviour, but it's very distressing for anyone who's witnessed

to or indeed victim of such an instance. So, sometimes the ones that I've witnessed first hand,

part of the problem would be that the train staff who are on right now are reasonably powerless

when it comes to this. I've been on trains where they've had to call the Guaradi and we wait until

the next stop and then maybe an instant gets dealt with by the Guaradi when they get there. Again,

that frustrates people because the train has to stop and so on and so forth as well. But generally,

those who are going up and down the general train staff who are attending their reasonably

powerless when it comes to some of these really serious incidents that we're talking about here.

No, you're correct. I mean, they don't have powers of arrest or they don't have jurisdiction

over those kind of instances. That's why they do call the Guaradi and we have rapid response hubs

throughout the country where our my colleagues can call the Guaradi if the situation is serious and

they need to be called. And then, you know, we've much improved response times since we started

the rapid response hubs. We also have joined patrols regularly between ourselves and the Guaradi

on board trains and at stations to raise awareness of the issue of anti-social behavior.

As you said at the start to your piece there, we have additional funding from the NTA this year

to provide more security patrols on board our services and at our stations. So, are we ever

going to eradicate anti-social behavior? No, but we're doing everything we can to try to minimize

the instances of us. Is there a possibility of extending the amount of,

effectively what I'm going to call, security on the trains? Because sometimes you're coming back

from a concert or from a game where later trains are put on and there will be two or three security

who are walking up and down the aisles. And even just the fact that their presence is there is

a deterrent to some of this behavior that we're reading in the report. Is there a possibility this

could maybe be rolled out in a wider basis then? So, at times of matches and concerts and festivals,

we would be mindful that there could be more instances of anti-social behavior. So, you know,

we would have increased security at those times, but is it practical that we would have security

on every train? It isn't, you know, and I don't know if it's needed either, as I said, the vast

majority of passenger journeys pass off peacefully with no anti-social behavior. Is there a possibility,

though, because I've spoken to some of the station masters at train stations up and going back to

where they've said that one of the big deterrents about having later trains which are available

to go across country is the fact that there's no security in terms of those services because they

feel like they could be a time where there could be issues. Again, could that possibly not if this

was available open up more services down the line? Well, we do, for our late-night services at Christmas

a new year, all of those services would have security on them because of the nature of the late-night

travel, but I suppose it's not as simple to provide more late-night intercity travel, for example,

because we would carry out line maintenance works overnight, so it was not to disrupt services

during the day. So, you know, our scope to provide more late-night services would be limited,

and because the fact we use that time to maintain the railway. Okay, my thanks to Jane Creak and

Joy, is there from Irish Rail? The last word. With life pharmacy, over 100 local pharmacies nationwide

that are always here to help life pharmacy live better together.