Irish Rail pays out €31,000 for train delays

There were 54 delays of between 60 and 120 minutes on the Cork to Dublin route and 45 between Galway and Dublin. Photo: RollingNews.ie

IRISH Rail paid out close to €31,000 in refunds to passengers over an 18-month period because of trains that were delayed by at least an hour.

The rail operator said that 1,794 people had been compensated with either 50% of their fare for a service that was between 60 and 120 minutes late or 100% for a delay of over two hours.

The average refund was just over €17, but Irish Rail said that in the period since January 2023 99.9% of services ran without major delays.

Data from Irish Rail showed that there were 528 trains that were between an hour and two hours late over an 18-month period up to the end of June this year.

The highest number of delays were on the Dublin to Belfast route where 110 services ran between 60 and 120 minutes after their scheduled time. There were 54 such delays on the Cork to Dublin route and 45 between Galway and Dublin.

DART passengers were affected by one-hour-plus waits on 66 occasions while there were 26 on the Westport line, 29 each on trains to Sligo and the Northern line, and 22 each on services to Rosslare and Waterford.

When it came to delays of longer than two hours, the Enterprise service to Belfast had 17 services that ran significantly late. There were also 14 services with 120-minute plus delays to Cork, 11 to Galway, and 10 to Sligo.

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Some routes had no delays of over two hours including routes to Cobh, Midleton, and Mallow in Cork and Limerick Junction in Tipperary.

Overall, there were 86 delays where a 100% refund had to be provided, 63 in 2023 and only 23 in the first half of this year.

A spokesman for Irish Rail said: “Thankfully, it is only a tiny proportion of our services which experience delays which result in compensation refund vouchers being applicable. 99.9% of trains operated without refund vouchers being applicable.

“Our Passengers’ Charter provides for refunds for delays of 60 minutes or more, and we would remind customers to avail of this should they face such serious disruption for any reason.”