Irish Rail gave some good news to their customers today when they announced the food trolley will be partially returning in just a few weeks.
Carriage Food Services will provide a trolley service with hot drinks, snacks and sandwiches on selected services on the Cork to Dublin route from early April, building to all Cork-Dublin services within weeks.
And Irish Rail will proceed with a full procurement process for catering services across the Intercity network. They will also work on a trial for catering vending machines on selected trains.
Read more: Public transport Ireland: Big change coming for planning rail and bus journeys
Irish Rail Communications Manager Barry Kenny told RTE's Morning Ireland that Carriage Food Services will be recruiting between 50 and 60 staff to deliver the trolley service on the Dublin to Cork line. "Starting from today, the supplier, Carriage Foods, that we have engaged with will be advertising for staff," he said.
"They'll start from early April and within a few weeks we will have all of the services covered because they have to hire between 50 and 60 staff to get this up and running."
Mr Kenny explained that the delay with bringing back the snack trolley after Covid-19 was due a major increase in the costs being quoted. "We have a full tender process now that will happen for the rest of the network," he said.
"What's happened here is basically, we compared with pre-Covid when we went back out to the market to get the service after our previous supplier pulled out of the contract last May.
"We were being quoted multiples of the cost. I think people probably appreciate that we pay the catering provider. It's not the case that someone bids to us.
"What we were being charged was, at a minimum, four times the cost that we were being quoted beforehand."
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Big change coming for planning rail and bus journeys in Ireland
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