Meath County Council is to write to the Minister for Transport and the National Transport Authority calling for extra buses and trains for large crowd events in Dublin. This follows reports that thousands of Meath fans were left stranded in the city following the Leinster football final between Meath and Louth. Supporters had long waits to get out of the city.
While traffic was at a standstill in the immediate aftermath of the game hundreds of fans, many young teenagers and children, were left waiting in Phibsboro and Drumcondra for hours for Bus Eireann services to get them back to Navan, Trim and Kells. Some did not make it home until after 10 on that May night.
Sinn Fein Cllr Fionnan Blake, pictured above, tabled a motion calling for better transport arrangements in the wake of city events. Cllr Blake said we had a “fantastic stadium” in Croke Park which held over 80,000 people. There was no car park capable of holding that number of people. On 11th May 65,000 people had attended the final, 30,000 of them from Meath and many of these depending on public transport.
He said that on that particular day buses arrived in Dunshaughlin “already full” with no buses coming behind them to collect passengers. A lot of people “had their tickets but no way in”. Parents were having to drop their children in for the match and then collect them after it. People had bought their tickets in advance for the train from Parkway but then were told that Parkway was “closed for maintenance”. People found trains arriving already full and people were stranded at that station, he said. “Having people arriving home exhausted at 11 o’clock at night is just not good enough”, the cllr said.
Meath live comment; With Meath playing Donegal this Sunday 3th July at Croke Park hopefully lessons will have been learnt. There will be a massive crowd from both counties and neutrals looking forward to the game that starts at 4.00pm
