Firstly, you can have sets in the right place half the day or all day. All day usually means parking them which reduces set productivity.
I've been looking at the Cork-Dublin timetable to see what could be done but the reality is that there are three ways to approach being above the available capacity - get more capacity, spread the demand onto adjacent services or yield manage.
In the first, while a little more capacity might arise when all 22000s are in service the reality is that money and track time will limit net gains.
In the second, most non Cork-Dublin services make setdowns in the commuter zone and are likely as full as those mentioned above. An example of this would be excusing the 1800 Heuston-Cork the set down at Ballybrophy, extending the 1805 beyond Portlaoise and tweaking the departure of the shuttle set. But that assumes that the set is either not needed to head back or more importantly that there is room on the 1805, which there may not be.
So that leaves a politically uncomfortable option - revoking the Brennan giveaway by reintroducing curbs on pass use at peak times or at the very least where IE can nominate certain services which are deemed chronically overfull while doing its best to ensure that a later service will run to take intending pass holders.
Mark G: what was the rostering issue again?
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