‘Health and safety’on the wrong track

IN recent years health and safety legislation has been called on more and more to explain away declining services from agencies that purport to serve the public.

Take a recent case that impinges on a good number of Waterford people.

For a start, I want to say I love travelling by train — it is comfortable, quick and very friendly to the environment. But almost every time I take the train to Dublin from Waterford, Iarnród Eireann conspires to do something new to diminish the pleasure.

My most recent journey was no exception. As we moved through the Kilkenny countryside, the tannoy announced that the trolley service was at the back of the train. Unusual, I thought, but anyway I ambled down.

Thinking there might be a problem with the trolley, I made an enquiry.

“Health and safety”, I was told.

I raised an eyebrow. “How do you mean?”

And the (curt) answer: “Look, would you like scalding water all over you if the train shakes”

I pointed out that trolleys were used on railways the world over and nowhere had I heard or read about passengers being boiled in their seats.

Meanwhile, passengers queuing for beverages were in a long line up the carriage and each person — on reaching the top of the line — was as close to the attendant as he or she would have been in the aisle. Except now there was a possible double hazard as the queued passengers were lurching uncertainly around the clamped trolley.

I then had to career up the train with my scalding coffee (milk still in little tubs), praying that I was not going to unleash the stuff over a couple of hundred passengers for whom there was no trolley service in the interests of their ‘health and safety’, would your believe?

Cllr Joe Conway

44 Roselawn

Tramore

Co Waterford