The chaos caused by Irish Rail’s new timetable in Dublin is “completely infuriating, upsetting and mind-boggling”, a Fianna Fáil senator has warned.

Iarnród Éireann has promised to change the new timetable after commuters in Dublin complained of lengthy delays, crowded trains and longer journey times.

The changes were introduced at the end of last month to allow for the extra Galway and Waterford intercity services as well as the upcoming hourly service to Belfast which is due to launch in October.

In the weeks since, passenger group Rail Users Ireland has warned that it has “not seen such repeated delays or such widespread passenger anger in many years”.

'Vastly inferior'

On Breakfast Briefing this morning Fianna Fáil Senator Lorraine Clifford-Lee said the people of North County Dublin have been left with a “vastly inferior train service”.

She insisted that the new timetable may have been aimed at improving services for some – but not commuters using the Northern Line.

“It's definitely prioritising other lines over the Northern Line because there is no way that anybody could say the experience of northern commuters was improved by the timetable that they were presented with,” she said.

“It's completely inadequate.

“People are telling me just really, really difficult stories about being late for work, having to get up earlier and earlier; having commuting times of two hours from North County Dublin into the city to go to work and two hours in the evening.

“Like this is completely unacceptable.”

"Infuriating"

She said the train service on the line “wasn’t great” to begin with – and has now been downgraded further.

“It's been downgraded to support the extra service from Belfast to Dublin on the Enterprise service,” she said.

“There's going to be an Enterprise train every hour and that's why our service has been downgraded

“It's completely infuriating, upsetting and mind-boggling that ordinary commuters from North County Dublin would be bearing the brunt just so a Belfast service can be added.”

Iarnród Éireann

Irish Rail has said it plans to roll out further timetable changes next week on the Maynooth and Drogheda lines where congestion has been impacted the most.

The changes will be between three and seven minutes on a range of services.

The utility also said it has been liaising with the National Transport Authority to try and improve punctuality for customers.

Senator Clifford-Lee said the changes “aren't going to improve the service at all from what I can gather”.

“That’s not just not my opinion, it's the opinion of the people that have been using trains and know the ins and outs and intricacies of the service,” she said

“From what they're saying and from my own observations, it's not going to improve the situation one jot.”

She urged Irish Rail to simply reinstate the old service, adding, “the changes that they're going to bring in from next Monday are only tinkering around the edges”.