Irish Rail forced to alter new timetable to resolve 'punctuality' issues

Irish Rail has announced it will make amendments to its new timetable following some service issues in Dublin, particularly around Connolly Station. 

The new timetable came into affect on Monday, August 26 which saw a welcome increase in some intercity services. However, the additional services have caused congestion and delays to trains en route to Connolly Station.

Services which previously ended at Grand Canal Dock are instead now terminating at Connolly Station. To accommodate the changes to the timetable, DART and commuter times were adjusted. 

Irish Rail has acknowledged that this new timetable has resulted in congestion at Connolly Station and caused delays to a number of intercity and DART services during peak commuter times.

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Barry Kenny, Head of Corporate Services with Iarnród Éireann, said: "We have experienced some issues impacting punctuality performance in the first two weeks of the implementation of the new timetable, notably arising from congestion in the Connolly Station area affecting commuter routes feeding into Connolly."

Irish Rail has announced that changes will be made to departure times and platforms from Monday next, September 16 in an attempt to resolve the issues.

Mr Kenny said: "From next Monday we will be changing the times on a number of services primarily on the Maynooth and northern commuter routes, and minor changes on other routes also, and this will be additional minutes in the scheduled journey time to ensure we are hitting that punctuality."