Irish Rail spent more than €1.35 million last year cleaning up graffiti and on the repair of vandalised trains.
The rail operator dealt with hundreds of incidents of deliberate damage in 2024 with train windows smashed in and lights broken.
Irish Rail said the cost of graffiti clean-up was €1.1 million with restoration bills of tens of thousands of euro for tagged intercity, commuter and DART trains.
Many of the clean-up jobs had five-figure bills, records showed, with repainting of one intercity train last May coming with a price tag of €33,250.
On a single day in April, Irish Rail paid out more than €56,000 for respray of two DART trains and an intercity vehicle.
There were nearly sixty jobs in total that cost at least €10,000, Irish Rail said.
A further €260,000 was spent on the repair of vehicles that were deliberately targeted by vandals.
Bills included €3,310 for five sidelights that were broken and over €4,000 for the replacement of smashed windscreens.
Other incidents led to the leaking of water into trains, the scratching of windows, and damage to the seals of components.
Irish Rail said their policy on graffiti was that trains were removed from service as quickly as possible to discourage future similar activity.
A copy of their operating procedure said: “Any unattended graffiti incidents typically end up on unwelcome social media sites, with the potential to encourage further graffiti attacks on fleet.
“It is absolutely imperative that no opportunity is given for rolling stock to become a blank canvas where such criminal damage can be displayed on [web] sites.”
The protocol said it was not permissible for trains to remain in service with graffiti except where the vehicle was scheduled to operate the next peak service.
It also said gardaí should be contacted before cleaning took place to ensure investigations were not compromised.
The policy document added that all costs from loss of passenger revenue, graffiti removal and damage to vehicles must be reported and recorded.
Asked about the cost of dealing with vandalism and graffiti, a spokesman for Irish Rail said: “Vandalism, including graffiti, not only disrupts our services through having to withdraw trains for repair; there are also significant costs arising from such vandalism.
“We have worked with our own security contractors and the gardaí and have seen a number of arrests and prosecutions, including relating to graffiti tags which have appeared on multiple occasions.”
Reporting by Ken Foxe
