Irish Examiner view: Railways could usher in a new golden age
Mick Lynch's grand tour should really have included stops at long-closed stations such as here at Albert Quay in Cork City centre. Picture (1961): Irish Examiner Archive
As a railway worker, the Larkinesque figure of Irishman Mick Lynch will know that timing is all important.
Lynch, arguably the best-known trade union leader in Western Europe, has chosen to retire in 2025 at the age of 63.
The man who led Britain’s Rail, Maritime, and Transport (RMT) union through a disruptive two-year dispute will step down in May before undertaking what he describes as an overdue “grand tour” of Ireland.
Lynch’s father, Jackie, came from Cork and his mother, Ellen, was from Armagh.
His departure comes as the world prepares to celebrate two centuries of a technological breakthrough in transport which, like the printing press and the internet, irrevocably transformed the way society is organised.
It was on September 27, 1825, that the Stockton and Darlington Railway opened in the north-east of England, joining Witton Colliery in the Wear Valley to River Cottage near the River Tees. At the Mason’s Arms level crossing in Shildon nearly 500 people clambered aboard wagons pulled by Locomotion No 1 to take part in the world’s first passenger journey on a steam-driven train.
While there will be sepia-tinged nostalgia aplenty — there are few fan bases more enthusiastic than trainspotters — much hope is invested in the industry’s ability to help us combat climate change, reduce reliance on cars, and provide the engine for a sociable and reliable form of transport.
Our government’s all-Ireland approach was set out last summer with the publication of 32 proposals to expand the rail system in the Republic and the North up to 2050.
Some of the proposals are more blue sky than others but all embrace the laudable objectives of increasing track capacity, electrification, enhancing speeds, and improving service frequency and reliability.
This should be the year when more flesh is put on the bones of our ambitions and this ought to be an early priority for any new government. With sales of electric vehicles going in reverse, we must have clearer ideas and timescales for the technologies which will assist our journey towards net zero.
The All Island Strategic Rail Review envisages tripling the number of people using the network annually from 65m passenger journeys (45.5m in the Republic in 2023) to more than 180m by 2050. If all its proposals are implemented this would cost some €37bn, or an annual cost of €1.2bn.
The New York Times has noted a “rail renaissance is under way” in Europe. In 2023, 429bn passenger kilometres were registered via rail, up from 386bn in 2022 (+11.2%). This is the highest number since data collection started in 2004.
Out of 8bn rail passengers in 2023 in the EU, almost half were travelling in Germany (33.9%) and France (15.0%). The number of passengers travelling by rail increased by 29% in Croatia, 28.7% in Ireland, and 25.1% in Luxembourg.
Some 200 years since George Stephenson’s invention chugged at 15mph through the Tees Valley there is every indication that we are falling back in love with railways and they stand on the brink of a new golden age.
Mick Lynch and his wife plan to visit all four provinces on their retirement trip.
Carrying that out by rail, particularly in the “empty quarter” of the North, may prove challenging in 2025. But train services can enjoy the support of an eloquent advocate when he visits these shores and beyond.
The case of six-year-old boy Kyran Durnin may be the story that has gathered the headlines, but the comprehensive
review of missing children and teenagers carried out by our reporter, Ann Murphy, on Saturday speaks to a systemic problem relating to the offspring of migrants and new arrivals to our shores.
Her analysis shows that these youngsters, from countries such as China, Afghanistan, Albania, Belarus, Congo, Kenya, Ethiopia, Georgia, , Liberia, Moldova, Nigeria, Romania, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Ukraine, Vietnam, and a variety of Arab countries, are disproportionately represented among those who have disappeared without trace after coming to Ireland.
More than 130 children and young people have disappeared across the country since 1977. Missing persons reports stopped delineating cases by nationality in 2017, but the variance between Irish and non-Irish is striking.
Last month, the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission said the number of human trafficking victims in Ireland was considerably underestimated. This was after a UN agency reported that over a period of three years, 140 victims had been identified in the Republic, including at least 10 children. They included one person brought here in 2022 for the removal of their organs for sale. It is a grisly, and Dickensian, spectre for a modern state which prides itself on its civilised values and duties of care. In many cases, no one seems to be fighting the corner of the missing who may feel they are strangers in a strange land. This must change.
Many people like using TikTok, the social media platform which allows users to share short-form videos. It has over 1.7bn active monthly users globally, not all of them posting amusing cats, lip-synced drill music, or dance routines.
That number is likely to be dented if TikTok, whose owner is based in China, is banned from operating in the US unless ByteDance sells it by next Sunday, January 19, the day before the inauguration of Donald Trump as president.
America’s Supreme Court listened to the arguments — that the app is susceptible to the influence of the Chinese government and poses a risk to national security — and is expected to rule this week. If it goes the government’s way it will be removed from Google and Apple stores. TikTok has 170m users in the US.
It’s unclear whether users will still be able to access the service if they have a VPN connection but in India, which banned TikTok in 2020, customers are met by a screen which says “service not available”.
There is still time, of course, for Trump to come to the app’s rescue and present himself as a champion of free speech. You feel he might just love that.
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