Cross-border refunds
 

I have just received a refund from Irish Rail relating to an absolutely miserable journey I had on the Enterprise service on January 16.

Basically, my service to Belfast was delayed by 70 minutes due to a signalling failure while my return was delayed by 80 minutes after the locomotive decided to pack up.

My question relates primarily to the calculation of the refund. How much should I receive? The travel vouchers I have obtained from Irish Rail only total less than 27% of my original return fare. That doesn't seem right. Anyone know what it should be?

Per the charter should be 50% of the value of a single ticket for each delay of more than 60 minutes. So on a return ticket half the face value for the described situation.


You can play an alternative and legally enforceable route

Under EU regulation EC1371/2007 you are legally entitled to 25% refund for 60 minutes or more and payable in cash.

So for a €29 ticket, I should be entitled to around €14.50 as both legs were affected by delays of more than 60 minutes. So who do I raise it with?

The vouchers should have come with a cover letter. Contact details and a reference number should be on that.

If no joy email us with the reference number from the letter and we can escalate this issue for you.

We have asked over and over again for a new refund form as the current one makes no sense at all.

I have contacted them. I must add that I found it extremely difficult to find the refund form - I was unusually determined because of the farcical nature of my trip on that day.

Isn't there some form of legal requirement to make things easier to find?

Failure to comply with EC1371/2007 has been raised with Irish Rail and if not resolved we will seek legal action via the NTA

Information on the Belfast line is a real problem in general.

None of the NIR network bar Newry, Portadown, Lisburn and Belfast Central is incorporated into the Irish Rail journey planner. The Translink journey planner has a similar blind spot for the Irish Rail network.

The Irish Rail website contains no fares information for journey combinations involving connections e.g. Dundalk to Derry. The generally cheaper straight-through fares aren't available from TVMs but only at booking offices [when they are open].

You can also tell when you are on an Irish Rail Enterprise by the complete failure to provide information regarding connections on either side of the border.

There is a licensing issue blocking the loading of the Northern Irish timetable into Irish Rail's system.

The TVM's at Enterprise stations until Dec 2013 offered tickets to all NI destinations, this is no longer the case. Particularly at weekends two tickets would be massively cheaper that a through ticket.

The NTA's journey planner www.a-b.ie has all timetables loaded.

It has a really odd bug with regard to public transport in Belfast for certain journey combinations e.g. Balbriggan to Portrush.

The sequence involved is:
1. Get off Enterprise at Central
2. Walk to Europa Bus Centre
3. Get bus to Wellington Place
4. Walk to Central
5. Get the train to Portrush

The correct answer is to wait at Central for the train.

In my experience, that isn't generally the case because through tickets are calculated as Enterprise plus an arbitrary supplement, rather than on distance.

Take a journey from Drogheda to Coleraine. A Drogheda to Belfast Day return is around €29. An NIR return from Belfast to Coleraine is £17.50. A through ticket is, from memory, about €34.

The only day when I can think of when two tickets would be cheaper than one might be on Sundays, when NIR sell £7 day ramblers for all journeys over that value, but I think even then you'd have to be travelling to Derry to get the full benefit.

It's worth adding that another issue with using two tickets is that NIR do not issue open returns.

Reported. I imagine it is at least down to NIR and Irish Rail having separate entries for Belfast Central.

You need to look at splitting at Newry.

Exactly, then the do a the Sunday rambler ticket