Irish Rail pays out €17,000 in refunds to passengers with 28 trains running more than two hours late

More than 260 Irish Rail services have been at least an hour late during the past two years.

Figures from Iarnród Éireann reveal that 237 trains were at least sixty minutes behind schedule, while 28 were more than one hundred and twenty minutes late.

Irish Rail had to pay out almost €17,000 to passengers and commuters for late trains, cancelled services, bridge strikes, and other operational hitches during 2020 and so far in 2021.

The rail operator said they had paid out €6,785 so far this year in refunds in 351 separate claims.

The majority, or 226 of the refunds, related to “train failure”, while timekeeping led to refunds in 62 separate cases.

Also logged were refunds for an incident on the line (26 cases), signal fault (19 refunds), track fault (7), security issue (7), bridge strike (3), and weather conditions (1).

Not all claims for refunds are paid however, and of the 517 cases received so far this year – refunds have issued thus far in only around two-thirds of cases.