Irish Rail faced a costly battle against vandalism in 2024, spending over €1.35 million cleaning graffiti and repairing deliberate damage to trains across the network.
The rail operator dealt with hundreds of incidents throughout the year, with graffiti removal alone accounting for €1.1 million of the total cost. The remaining €260,000 was spent repairing trains targeted by vandals, including smashed windows, broken lights, and damaged components.
Individual clean-up jobs frequently carried hefty price tags, with nearly sixty incidents costing at least €10,000 each. The most expensive single repair involved repainting an intercity train last May, which cost €33,250. On one particularly costly day in April, Irish Rail paid over €56,000 for respraying two DART trains and an intercity vehicle.
The vandalism extends beyond graffiti, with repair bills including €3,310 for five broken sidelights and over €4,000 for windscreen replacements. Other incidents caused water leaks, window scratching, and seal damage to various train components.
Irish Rail operates a strict policy requiring immediate removal of graffitied trains from service to prevent encouraging copycat attacks. Internal operating procedures warn that “unattended graffiti incidents typically end up on unwelcome social media sites, with the potential to encourage further graffiti attacks.”
The policy prohibits trains from remaining in service with visible graffiti, except when scheduled for the next peak service. The protocol also requires contacting gardaí before cleaning to preserve potential evidence for investigations.
An Irish Rail spokesman confirmed the company works closely with security contractors and gardaí, resulting in arrests and prosecutions, particularly targeting repeat offenders whose graffiti tags appear multiple times across the network.