Updated at 12:15
Irish Rail spokesperson Barry Kenny has acknowledged that the company “got it wrong” with the recent planned changes to services on the Dublin to Belfast line.
“We got it wrong, and we are genuinely very, very sorry to our customers. It's been very disruptive in recent weeks for our customers. People build their work, their education, their childcare around their travel with us, and we have let them down. We are sorry for that.
"The change we made on the 16th of September, did improve the situation with the evening peak. But the issues were continuing in the morning, and we were liaising with Translink, with whom we jointly operate the Belfast services and the NCA are regular commuters,” he told RTÉ radio’s Today with Claire Byrne show.
Mr Kenny explained that the timing changes “were too ambitious."
“We underestimated the impact of a lot of those changes in the morning peak, the kind of interchange that was happening, because there were delays to the services. This was cascading in terms of the interchange and people's overall end-to-end journey is extended.
"I think, structurally, in the timetable, in trying to accommodate the additional Belfast services, we put far too much onus on the clear running time through for that Belfast. It was to the detriment of the commuter services, and we have redressed that in these changes, which will come in on Monday week.
“But broadly speaking, I suppose the message to customers is that the patterns and times you were travelling on before, the first of these changes will be restored.”
Mr Kenny also defended the decision by Irish Rail to send a delegation of 37 officials to a transport trade fair in Berlin. The event covered all aspects of the rail industry in terms of infrastructure, fleet, capital investments, customer systems, he said.
“We are at a point in our investment programme, which is going to be up to €8 billion under projects that are confirmed as in Project Ireland 2040 and potentially €35 billion on the island in strategic revenue, where we have to develop and design a lot of those.
“There is no other place where you will have this scale of industry representation and the particular point at which our projects are. So the people who went to this were primarily the technical specialists and programme leads across our portfolio of capital invest and things like that.
“We will see benefit from this. We have from previous attendance in terms of innovations in alternative fuels that will come through.”
The people who attended the conference were not the people who would have been coordinating the timetable, he said.
New timetable
In terms of the changes, morning timetables on routes operating to/from Connolly Station (up to 9:30am to 10am approx) will revert to the pattern of the pre-26th August timetable, with minor time changes.
This includes trains which previously terminated at stations such as Pearse, Grand Canal Dock and Bray resuming operation to/from these stations, reducing the need for interchanges in the morning peak at Connolly Station.
There will be revised running times on a number of Belfast services, including changes to times on the 6am and 7am Belfast to Dublin services, arriving to Dublin at 08:23am and 09:20am respectively.
As well as improving punctuality for Commuter services, this will enable a key gap in the Northern Commuter morning service to be reduced:
Current departure times from Drogheda (with Donabate times for reference) are: 6:58am (7:32am), 7:09am (7:44am), 7:41am (08:16am)
New departure times during the same time window from Drogheda (Donabate) from Monday 14th October will be: 6:55am (7:30am), 7:05am (7:39am), 7:19am (7:55am), 7:36am (8:13am).
Additionally, the proposed 07:50hrs Dublin Connolly to Belfast will operate at 07:40am, to prevent congestion at Malahide.
Some evening services which currently commence from Pearse/Grand Canal Dock will commence from Bray / Dun Laoghaire
There will be some minor changes to departure times to a number of DART, Northern, Maynooth and Phoenix Park Tunnel commuter trains, and one Dublin to Rosslare train to facilitate the above.
Increased services on the Galway, Waterford and Belfast lines implemented on August 26th will be maintained.
To address ongoing punctuality issues, a revised timetable will be introduced from Monday 14th October.
This will include a restoration of pre-26th August morning timetable pattern on all routes to/from Connolly, with some minor time changes.
More info: https://t.co/RJ1WZhaW6X
— Iarnród Éireann (@IrishRail) October 3, 2024
Commuting experience
Meanwhile, Fianna Fáil Senator Lorraine Clifford-Lee said she had engaged with her party colleague, Minister of State at the Department of Transport James Lawless and with Irish Rail on the new timetable introduced on 26th August, that had worsened the commuting experience for people from North County Dublin.
She said: "I am happy to confirm that, after my engagement with Irish Rail and with my party colleague Minister James Lawless, Irish Rail will be announcing a new timetable, which will, more or less, revert to the pre-26th August morning timetable.
"The new timetable will be implemented from Monday, October 14th and has been announced to address the enormous disruption caused by the new timetable introduced on 16th September to North County Dublin commuters work, education, childcare and life needs.
"While it does not solve all the issues, and I will continue to keep the pressure on and engage on this until all issues are resolved, the new timetable is good news for North County Dublin commuters. It will particularly help with the situation regarding morning commutes where the new timetable had an extraordinarily negative impact."
