The letter from Barry Kenny of Iarnród Éireann typifies his pugnacious approach to the slightest criticism of his employer, both in print and in particular when he participates in interviews. It is fortunate for those who paid taxes to the tune of €200m the government handed CIÉ in 2008 to observe his company's performance in the face of the disruption of air traffic.

Yesterday (Saturday 17 April), the service from Rosslare to Dublin was deferred by one hour to 13.35. The only way you would have known was to examine the timetable, as Mr Kenny's staff failed to communicate this on 'travel alerts' on the company website, cluttered as it is with Google advertising.

They did announce the deferral of today's service to 18.45 to meet the incoming ferry, but that only highlights the fact that they don't bother to do that normally. There will be no service from the ferry to Waterford and Limerick today – but that's the same as any other Sunday on the south Wexford line.

The biggest irony of all is that Iarnród Éireann owns Rosslare Europort, which you would think would lead it to aggressively chase the passenger market, but it is apparently not selling 'rail and sail' tickets this weekend, referring travellers to the ferry companies.

No doubt some blame attaches to the latter but the reality is that Iarnród Éireann rarely misses a chance to miss an opportunity. Travellers are more likely to get correct information from Rail Users Ireland, a voluntary body, than from Mr Kenny, his department's website and its Twitter stream.

As for scrapping 25-year-old trains, those who have travelled by rail in North America know that by frequent interior refitting, railways like Amtrak maintain comfort in trains of 30 and 40 years' service. VIA Rail Canada just issued a contract to a Canadian company to gut and refurbish its LRC 100mph carriages of a similar vintage to the Mark IIIs, creating tax revenue to offset the company's subvention requirement.

Needless to say the expertise in Inchicore to do such work has been long since 'downsized'.

Finally, I wonder how many people could name the head of PR for Bus Éireann or Dublin Bus, much larger in terms of vehicles, routes and passenger counts. Mr Kenny is notorious to readers and listeners because his organisation fails far too frequently and publicly.

Mark Dowling,

134 Springdale Boulevard,

Toronto, Ontario,

Canada