An impressive looking thing, even if I would never even begin to understand what all the buttons or for, or the numerous signs and labels. It seems, from the narrative above, that IE staff will not operate this thing at all, but instead a team of people employed by a specially set-up Irish subsidiary of the makers - is that right?
Seems over-the-top in terms of administration - and somebody's company CEO salary and dividends.
Could this be like the creeping and insidious "privatisation" of the British NHS by introducing more and more "private contractors" and "specialist firms", and "partners"?
Just a thought.
On a completely different note, any time I see the latest thing that maintenance and PW people are getting, I wonder what my father, a lifelong PW Civil Engineer, would have made of it! Old-school as he was in many ways, he was always keen to embrace new tech, and was pleased to be one of the first to get hold of the GNR's first ever tamper, which he deployed between Dundalk and Inniskeen before the GNR's Eastern District snaffled it........