Iarnród Éireann Investment is welcome, but it must travel hand-in-hand with real improvements in punctuality, communication and basic passenger care.
Iarnród Éireann paid out almost €150,000 in over 5,500 compensation payments to passengers for delayed, dirty, and overcrowded trains in the first 10 months of 2024 alone. The figures were obtained by European Transport Committee MEP, Cynthia Ní Mhurchú, after a 12-month battle with Iarnród Éireann to release the figures — a process that required the involvement of the Information Commissioner.
In assessing customer service standards in the EU rail network as part of her work on the European Parliament Transport Committee, MEP Ní Mhurchú had originally asked Irish Rail to provide annual compensation figures paid to passengers covering the period from 2020 to 2025. After initially ignoring the request, and following an internal review and an intervention by the Information Commissioner, Iarnród Éireann released figures for 2024, clarifying that the National Transport Authority took over the compensation of Irish Rail customers from October 15th 2024 onwards.
Iarnród Éireann has paid passengers compensation for issues such as late trains, rude staff, cancellations, train failures, reserved seats being occupied, overcrowding, cleanliness issues, anti-social behaviour and inappropriate behaviour of staff.
*Full list in the FOI at the WeTransfer link above
The figures show that Iarnród Éireann paid out €148, 934. 08 to passengers in less than a year. Ní Mhurchú pointed out that over a 10 year period, assuming a static level of annual compensation, Iarnród Éireann could pay out almost 1.5million in compensation to disgruntled passengers.
When travelling by rail, passengers are protected by EU wide travel rights which includes refunds for delays. Iarnród Éireann have incorporated EU passenger rights into a Customer Charter which sets out their commitments to hitting a range of targets when it comes to customer service. For delays of between 1 and 2 hours, Iarnród Éireann commit to refunding 50% of that journey in Irish Rail vouchers or 25% in cash. For delays of over 2 hours, Iarnród Éireann commit to a full refund in vouchers or a 50% refund in cash. They also commit to a full refund, in vouchers, if your reserved seat is unavailable and there is no other seat of the same standard on the train.
Ní Mhurchú emphasised that she warmly welcomes recent investment announcements at Iarnród Éireann but added that there is little point in having more train schedules until we improve punctuality, cleanliness and safety for passengers.
“Big announcements are great but if we want people to make the switch from the car to the train, then our trains have to be clean, on time and focused on better customer service. Iarnród Éireann likes to trumpet a 93% satisfaction rate on its intercity services — but when you’re running 12 million journeys a year on those services, that still leaves roughly 840,000 unhappy passengers every single year (7%). That’s hardly a customer service record to be boasting about.”
The Transport Committee MEP has written to Iarnród Éireann seeking clarification on how the company plans to improve customer services on our trains.
ENDS
