A photo posted by a passenger circulated widely on social media yesterday and showed apparent overcrowding on an afternoon train from Galway to Dublin.
It shows a crowd of people sitting on the floor in the hallway of the train with little to no social distancing.
50% of the seats are marked off so that people can socially distance - yet every carriage corridor looks like this. Impossible to get to the toilet without being on top of one & other. I don’t mean to sound negative - but this is not right @IrishRail @MichealMartinTD pic.twitter.com/hGhP43Fj5l
— Holly Carpenter (@Holly0910) July 19, 2020
Barry Kenny from Irish Rail says the company are working to make sure this does not happen again and that the overcrowding was due to seats being blocked from use under social distancing guidelines:
“Well firstly, obviously sorry to the people who travelled on that service. Our service at the moment are operating at 50 per cent of capacity, so while in a normal circumstance there would have obviously been sufficient seating for everybody, in fact comfortably so on that service, 50 per cent of the seats are currently blocked off.”
Irish Rail has previously removed passengers from its services for their refusal to wear a face mask, since their use became mandatory on public transport last week.
