Public Transport
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-30
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Darragh O'Brien (FF), Dublin Fingal East

This is an operational matter. I do not direct Iarnród Éireann as to when it maintains its lines. I recognise there will unquestionably be inconvenience to people. Bank holiday weekends allow engineers to work continuously for 76 hours on the line and get extensive work done that does not have to be spread over other weekends. Fortunately, there is very rarely a weekend where there is not a major event on in this country and in our capital city. That could be sport, concerts, mini-marathons or whatever. That is good because it is a vibrant city and a lot of people use the city. DART services will operate on the southern line from Greystones into the city. It is the northern line that will be impacted. There are additional bus services put on that line. During the June bank holiday further work will happen. All those details are pre-announced and they are all up on the website. It is also advertised that there will be disruption when lines are closed for maintenance. There is no easy way of doing this. There is only so much work you can get done during night-time hours because we are running earlier and later trains, so the gap for maintenance at night is shorter. That is why if we can get 76 hours of continuous work done, that is banked and we do not have to do it over successive weekends.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-30/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-30