There’s concern in Bagenalstown that its train station’s to be downgraded & left with no staff.
Irish Rail is planning to hit a number of its venues across the country with the Muine Bheag station among them.
Councillor Arthur McDonald’s raised the issue with KCLR News and says, if true, it would have far reaching consequences for customers noting “I’d be very worried about this, it’s going to have far-reaching implications, the type I’m talking about is that there’d be no person on the premises for to get a ticket from, and if they got on the train then they’re illegally on the train, could be prosecuted, somebody could come in with a car and not enough change for their parking and could be clamped when they come back. The cleaning of the station, the general maintanence of the station is done by the one person who’s there”.
Cllr McDonald adds that there are issues facing people with disabilities, pointing out “If it’s not manned then there’s nobody to take out the ramp. So if they’re coming from Dublin they’ll have to get off in Carlow or Kilkenny and they have to get a taxi from either Carlow or Kilkenny out to Bagenalstown in a wheelchair accessible. We have to lobby our TDs, lobby our parties and lobby the Govt to see that they don’t go ahead with it. What is one man’s wages looking after a station, some people say “they’re not there all the time” but they’re there on the most important times”.
He also says “South Carlow is going to be devastated because we have a situation where people all the way come from New Ross, they don’t go into Waterford or New Ross because of parking & traffic, they come down to Muine Beag. Between 35 & 70 people will be waiting on the train at different times, there’s at least four or five people with disabilities will want to use the train that I know of, maybe many many more. But the real reality about the situation is that we have to look after the people”.
Barry Kenny from Irish Rail confirmed that it’s true but adds that there’ll be no change in service at the station, which is says is not manned full time currently in any case noting “We want to put more customer service people on board our trains and then evaluate in each station location what the requirement is. So we do expect in the coming months for Bagenalstown to go from a partially manned station, it wouldn’t be fully manned at present, to an unmanned station but it should be noted that we now have customer service officers on the vast majority of Waterford routes and we will shortly have them on all Waterford routes which means that if you’re boarding in Bagenalstown there will be people on the train to assist you if that’s what’s required.”
He says they’ve a better plan in place that will involve having customer service representatives on board all of the routes from Waterford to Heuston “Because we had customer service officers on board the inter-city services that there is somebody there for each train both to assist them boarding and alighting and that is a better means of service provision than having stations manned some of the time. It does mean that you can ensure that that presence is there as well as that the customer service officers on board are able to support people with ticketing, with information as well. This isn’t something that’s happening right across the network, we do assess how busy each ticket office are, nor is it happening in one fell swoop, it will happen gradually over time”.
And he adds “We’re confident this is going to lead to a better service for customers. I would say one thing is that obviously Bagenalstown station is a very beautiful building, we are working with our property team internally to ensure that we can actually lease for another use the building, it is important that a building of that quality does have a presence to enable it to be maintained on an ongoing basis. We feel that it would be very positive if there was a use then made for the station building & that’s why we’re working with our property team to ensure that we can get a lease arrangement in place. It could be anything from office to retail that would go into the station itself”.
