“Irish train driver steals €50 million from Irish Rail”.
Imagine if that were the main story across all media platforms today? The country would be up in arms, and rightly so.
It is not the headline, no train driver has stolen €50 million from Irish Rail.
What has happened is that Irish Rail/NTA have spent €50 million for nothing. They employed Spanish company Indra to upgrade the signalling system across the rail network. Irish Rail/NTA are not satisfied with work to date at a loss of €50 million of tax payers’ money.
Who has been managing this work? Was there a weekly/monthly monitoring of what was being done? And if so to whom were the managers responsible?
If a train driver had stolen the money he would be jailed. Who will be answerable for this loss of money?
Does management ever take the blame for their wrong doing, inefficiency and simple sloppiness? Seldom, far too seldom.
No media outlet has explained why there was need to replace the current Central traffic Control (CTC) and replace it with the Indra Traffic Management System (TMS).
No doubt the managers either stay or move on to other jobs, all the time remaining in their fine homes and driving their fine cars. And no one says boo to them.
But that’s the way the world works; it never changes and right across all systems, groups, organisations and churches down the history of humankind.
2 comments:
Thanks for the insights. I wonder what the original contract actually required. Was Indra contracted to deliver a complete signalling upgrade, or was the initial phase limited to due diligence, system design, planning, and proof of concept before full implementation?
Without seeing the contract, it’s difficult to know whether €50 million represents a failed delivery, a partially completed programme, or work that still has value even if the project has now changed direction.
The National Children’s Hospital also comes to mind. Large public projects seem to have recurring issues with governance, oversight, changing specifications, and accountability. It would be good to see more reporting on how these decisions were made, who was responsible for monitoring progress, and what lessons will be learned, rather than simply focusing on the headline figure.
The blogspot piece hits the nail on the head: a train driver pocketing fifty quid faces instant ruin. This brutal double standard is visible across Europe, from German supermarket cashiers who have been fired and prosecuted over an unpaid bottle of water or redeeming a discarded €1.30 coupon, to the untouchable elite at the very top.
As a reader accurately pointed out, without seeing the original contract, it's hard to know if Irish Rail's €50 million write-off with Indra represents a total system failure or if some underlying design work still holds value. But whether it's this failed rail project or the spiraling costs of the National Children’s Hospital, large public works consistently suffer from shifting specifications and a total lack of accountability. Instead of transparency, we get the same old double standard.
When Christine Lagarde was found guilty of criminal negligence for rubber-stamping a €404 million taxpayer payout to a tycoon, judges spared her any fine or criminal record due to her "international reputation," clearing her path to lead the European Central Bank. Meanwhile, Ursula von der Leyen secretly brokered a €35 billion vaccine contract via private texts with Pfizer's CEO. Despite the EU General Court ruling in May 2025 that she violated transparency laws with "evasive" excuses for making those texts disappear, she remains comfortably in power. Ultimately, the billions are gone, the texts remain hidden, and the contrast is clear: the system will crush a worker over a single euro, but it shields the elite who lose billions.
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