The minister is never going to take responsibility, the corporate governance situation is such that the 'day to day' operations are entirely the companies issue, the minister has no say.
I've said it numerous times on radio and in interviews with various journalists what we need is a contractual arrangement where failure to provide the service results in serious consequences. At the moment Irish Rail have an infinite overdraft management don't care if the whole show shuts down for 3 months. You can be very sure if the DOT pulled the funding plug the day trains stop you would see a very different approach inside Irish Rail to providing the service since the management team would simply be replaced by company like Veoila
Current agreement is DoT signs cheques, Irish Rail fabricate a statistics process (different to the charter) which always results in a positive image ignoring the common standards across Europe. There is no legal standing so the DoT have no power
I pay my money to Irish Rail with a reasonable expectation that the timetabled service is provided, the ultimate responsibility always rests with management to provide this, if they can't then someone else needs to take over
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