IRISH RAIL FORKS OUT COMPO OF €17K FOR DELAYS
MORE than 260 Irish Rail services have been at least an hour late in the past two years – costing the firm €17,000 in passenger compo claims.
Iarnrod Éireann figures reveal that 237 trains were at least 60 minutes behind schedule, while 28 were more than 120 minutes late off the mark.
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 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 (seven), security issue (seven), bridge strike (three), and weather conditions (one).
Not all claims for refunds are paid, however, and of the 517 cases so far this year, refunds were issued so far in only around two-thirds of cases.
This year’s figures are in line with claims in 2020 when 860 people sought a ticket refund.
Of those, 467 – or around 54 per cent – have been paid with most again relating to “train failure” and smaller numbers for time keeping, signal faults, and incidents on the line.
Irish Rail figures revealed that at least 90 per cent of all services left within 5 or 10 minutes of their scheduled departure time both this year and last.
So far this year, all services on the Midleton rail service in Cork left on time.
Similarly high figures were also recorded on lines serving Cobh, Tralee, LimerickGalway, Mallow- Cork, Limerick-Heuston, and Ballybrophy-Limerick – all of which had 98 per cent punctuality rates or higher. Services with the highest number of trains departing at least five or 10 minutes late included the DART network – serving Dublin and Wicklow – with a rate of 92 per cent.
Failure
The Belfast- Connolly Enterprise line also suffered a higher rate of delays than other services with punctuality levels recorded at 94 per cent, with the same figure applying to the Northern Commuter service that runs on the same railway line.
A spokeswoman for Irish Rail said: “This year to date, we are exceeding our punctuality targets. As of October, 162,952 services operated within our Public Service Contract targets. This equates to 95.3 per cent punctuality.”