The charge levelled by Fine Gael that the Department of Public Enterprise "doctored" an important report on rail safety is very serious and requires a detailed response from the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke. Fine Gael has claimed that safety on three routes - Athlone to Claremorris, Mallow to Tralee and Limerick Junction to Waterford - has been comprised by dilution of the risk assessment made by the British firm, International Risk Management Services (IRMS). Certainly, there are serious discrepancies between the draft document and the final published report which cannot be easily explained. In the draft report, the consultants found that safety standards on the three routes pose an unacceptable risk and require urgent attention. By contrast, the final report said there were "no line sections where passenger risk level exceeded the intolerable risk benchmark". In the draft the consultants also conclude: "The real problem is that no serious railway in the world would be running such a lightweight and obsolete rail section in main lines. The responsibility (for safety) has been pushed onto those at the lowest level without them being aware of what they are taking on". The final report, though damning of safety standards and management practices, was much more polite and restrained in its language. There was no mention of any intolerable risk on the three lines in question.
While denying that its findings were watered down, IRMS has acknowledged that the Department of Public Enterprise made revisions to the final text. The Department itself claims that this kind of consultation is routine in such cases. But the tens of thousands of people who travel along the three routes in question every year will not be reassured by this explanation - especially when these same routes were also found to be in a dangerous condition in an earlier safety review commissioned by CIE two years ago. It is to be hoped that the controversy will help to concentrate minds in government on the dangerous and shameful state of the rail system in this State. Improvements have been made on the Belfast/Dublin/ Cork lines but these only serve to highlight the chronic under investment in the rest of the rail network. The average age of locomotives is now 23 years; that of carriages 16 years; signalling installations and some sections of track are in a very poor condition. The most neglected section of track, that between Dublin and the West, would not be out of place in some of the poorest, least developed regions of the world.
CIE itself estimates that it would cost £650 million over eight years to bring the service up to the standard of the Belfast/Dublin/Cork lines; the IRMS report recommends that £590 million should be spent on the system over the next 15 years. In framing a response to these reports, the Government must first respond to the safety concerns and invest what is required without further delay. It might also, instead of giving the impression of fumbling around in the dark on the issue of public transport, move to give priority to the rail system. The case for major investment in modern train systems, of the type taken for granted by our EU partners, is clearcut.