If true, then this would seem to be symptomatic of the Irish malaise

It’s been a while since I commented on Ireland. This is in spite of the recent statement on public spending that has essentially but an emergency stop on the vast majority of capital spending projects, and which has led to the Interconnector and Metro North being officially put “on hold”. Only the Luas BXD line, intended to link together the existing Red and Green lines through the centre of Dublin (finally), has been given the green light, probably in no small part due to it being the cheapest of the three. However, that’s not what I want to comment on. Looking through the Irish Railway News message boards as I do from time to time, I came across a thread entitled “End of 2700s?”. The 2700 Class is a DMU type used predominently on commuter services outside Dublin, and rural services – the entire fleet of twelve 2-car sets (plus a pair of single car 2750 units) is currently based at Limerick, operating the majority of services from Limerick Colbert. The 2700 Class, constructed by Alstom, are just over a decade old, and have in the last 18 months undergone a refurbishment. So imagine my surprise when I read the following:

Yes, there is plans to place the 2700s into storage (probably permanent storage) in the coming months but it hasn’t been finalised or signed off on yet, the plan if it goes ahead will see the 2800s going to Limerick to replace the 2700s, the reason why the newer 2700s are in for the chop instead of 2600s is because the 2600s and 2800s share a majority of identical parts and are cheaper to maintain and more reliable than the 2700s. Ballina branch will most likely be worked by 22000s instead of 2800s with the set swap done using existing Westport services and Drogheda will gain some 22000s also! Basically the 2700s will be a casualty of IE buying too many 22000s!

While you can understand the logic of Iarnród Éireann looking to save money by basing its commuter fleet around related types (as the 2600 and 2800 Classes are), why spend the money on refurbishing a fleet of trains only to withdraw them almost immediately? Would not the more logical thing to do be to refurbish the trains that they intended to continue with, and use the ones to be discarded until the job was finished? Further to this is the idea of using the 22000 Class on these kind of commuter/rural services that they aren’t especially suited for. The 22000 Class can be likened to the Voyager family in use in Great Britain – a DMU optimised for long journeys, where distances between stops are not 3-4 minutes, but 10-20 minutes (at least), and the stops tend to be major centres. There is a reason that British TOCs that run long-range commuter services didn’t choose Voyager type trains, instead either going for the Desiro or Turbostar/Electrostar, which are high volume types, but configured for longer journeys. If it is true that the withdrawal of the 2800 Class is simply to give more things to do to the overpurchased 22000 Class, then I think it’s time for a wholesale clearout of those running Iarnród Éireann, as they evidently are yet to learn anything in regards to not just saving money, but spending it wisely.

One could say that the withdrawal of the 2700 Class though could be an opportunity, as this would make available a fleet of relatively modern DMUs, all of which are cleared to operate pretty much throughout the whole Irish network. Compared with NI Railways’ soon to be withdrawn Class 450s, these would be a much better option for any potential open access operator to obtain. If anyone was bothering to try and do that now. Which they don’t seem to be, based on the total lack of news on that score.

A 2750 Class unit - the 2700 and 2750 Class have recently been refurbished and now seem to be on the way out. Is this really a good use of Iarnród Éireann's limited resources?