Staff on Iarnród Éireann services are experiencing an increase in anti-social behaviour, with figures showing the upward trend in incidents reported on rail services last year has continued into the first half of this year.

Last month, RTÉ's This Week programme revealed anti-social behaviour incidents on the rail service between 2016 and 2017 had increased by almost 50% from 492 to 705.

Now figures for the first half of 2018 show staff have already reported a further 429 incidents. That is an increase of 22% from the first half of 2017 and almost as many incidents as occurred in all of 2016.

More than a quarter of the 429 incidents were reported as aggressive behaviour.