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IRISH FERRIES HAS brought a High Court challenge over a finding that it must pay compensation to thousands of passengers affected by the cancellation of sailings between Ireland and France last summer.
The company says it had to cancel the services because a new ferry it had ordered, the WB Yeats, to operate the service between Dublin and Cherbourg was delayed for several months.
The challenge has been brought against a National Transport Authority (NTA) decision in January, that arising out of the cancellations, the company breached EU regulations concerning the rights of passengers travelling by sea.
The NTA issued the company with two notices requiring Irish Ferries to pay compensation to impacted passengers within a period of two months.
The notices direct the company to pay compensation to passengers impacted by the cancellations who had to travel from Rosslare instead of Dublin, and from Roscoff instead of Cherbourg.
The notices also state passengers who were delayed in reaching their final destination who have already requested compensation from the company must also be paid compensation.
Non-compliance with the notices is an offence, with a maximum fine on conviction of €250,000.
The company disputes the NTA’s finding and says it and the notices are invalid, irrational, in breach of its Constitutional Rights and EU rights.
Irish Ferries also says the NTA has misinterpreted the relevant EU regulations.
The cancellations occurred because a new ship it had commissioned from the German shipyard Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft was delivered some “200 days” late Irish Ferries counsel Paul Gallagher SC told the High Court today.
Counsel said the delay came as a shock to Irish Ferries and made headlines in the media.
Counsel said the company took steps including offering “an immediate no quibble reimbursement in full” to affected customers, offered vouchers for €150, as well as “the opportunity to rebook on alternative sailings of their choosing”.
Some 5,700 bookings were affected by the cancellations.
Counsel said the majority of affected passengers, some 82%, chose to travel on alternative sailings to France with Irish Ferries.
The remainder either cancelled and accepted a refund or chose to travel by landbridge through the UK, and were compensated by Irish Ferries for the fuel expended while crossing Britain.
Counsel said that his client is concerned about the long term implications of the NTA’s decision.
The situation Irish Ferries found itself was extraordinary, was not of its own making, and it was unable to secure another ferry to operate the planned sailings, counsel said.
All affected passengers counsel said were informed of the situation a minimum of seven weeks before the proposed sailing, he added.
In its judicial review action, Irish Ferries seeks various orders including one quashing the NTA’s decision and the notices it issued to the company.
It also seeks various declarations from the Court including that the NTA’s decision and the notices are invalid, are irrational and are without any legal basis.
The further seeks declarations including that the decision and the notices fly in the face of common sense, take into account irrelevant considerations, and are disproportionate.
Permission to bring the challenge was granted, on an ex-parte basis, by Mr Justice Seamus Noonan, who also placed a stay on the notices from coming into effect.
The judge made the matter returnable to a date in May.
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Poor corporate decision and impecabble timing just as folks are booking summer holidays. I’ll stick with the airlines.
@silentbob2012: Support Stena Line. They’re actually sound to their customers and employees.
@Rebecca De Stanleigh: clearly you don’t know them as well as I do. The food & cabins they give us truck drivers are a disgrace with both myself and my colleagues becoming extremely I’ll after eating food on their ferries. Yes IF have not got much of a reputation either but I’ll gladly travel with them over Stena.
@silentbob2012: Good luck getting your car on a Ryan Air flight
@silentbob2012: Good luck getting your car on a Ryan Air flight
@Rebecca De Stanleigh: Being sound to employees is actually a rarity…. and has a wonderful impact on their ability to deliver great customer service. TBF though, if ti is not Irish Ferries fault, shouldn’t Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft reimburse them for their failure to deliver on time?
I’m sure there was a clause in the contract where the supplier has to pay a penalty to Irish Ferries if not delivering on time which is the norm so what’s the problem!
@Dominick Lodola: the problem is that Irish ferries want to keep the payment!
@Dominick Lodola: The shipyard hasn’t paid anything because they’re in turn blaming a sub-contractor and saying that the delay has put them on the edge of bankruptcy.
Their workers recently went on strike after not being paid three weeks in a row so I don’t think Irish Ferries will be getting any compensation any time soon.
@Dominick Lodola: It never was going to be delivered on time. That’s the issue. Besides sea trials etc always bring up unforeseen delays. These are one of projects.
The shouldn’t have been accepting bookings for a ship they hadn’t actually got in their possession. Simple really.
@Jason Ebbs: Don’t be ridiculous. That’s like not buying a house before it’s built, not booking a holiday until the day you want to go on it etc. If there was no delivery date for a ship/any large scale project in general, it would never be completed. The yard are responsible for hiring subcontractors to complete the works, the fault lies with them, and the daily penalties incurred for late delivery would have been signed into the contract long before they even started cutting the steel.
Do you think they cancelled those trips to see how many would actually use Dublin instead of Rosslare? I know they said the Oscar Wilde wasn’t ready but they could have chartered a Ferry at the time. And now no French route from Rosslare at all.
@FartyTowels: Stena Line sail to Cherbourg (in France) from Rosslare? Brittany have also added more sailings to France from Cork this year.
The CSO stats clearly show that Rosslare only really had a share of the leisure trade and nearly all cargo traffic goes through Dublin; With Brexit coming up and most affected companies based in the Greater-Dublin Area, love or hate the choice, it made a lot of sense to switch the sailings from Rosslare to Dublin.
Gotta agree totally with irish ferries.
Totally unexpected and looked after passengers plenty notice vouchers etc.
NTA civil servants cant interpret laws.
If i booked any service, whether a hotel or concert ticket whatever and it was cancelled due to extraordinary event and got two months notice refund free vpucher etc cant expect even more compo. Where does it end.
@Padraig Salah: it’s your summer holidays not some concert tickets, accommodation booked and time off work etc
@Ian James Burgess: exactly. It’s all well and good giving back the price of the tickets but you could end up having to pay more to travel a different way because you’re booking at short notice or lose the rest of the cost of your travel. Some people may have budgeted for that trip and can’t afford much more. Living in ireland is expensive and not everybody has that much expendable income and less so at short notice.
@Ian James Burgess:
Its definitely hassle if people have budgeted for it, booked time off etc, but is there not any insurance people could take out to cover extraordinary events.
@Damien Hawe: that’s why travel insurance exists. Advise to buy some, if never travel without. Never know what will happen.
@Padraig Salah: travel insurance is for when you travel not for when you don’t go anywhere.
@Ian James Burgess:
Bottom line is this compensation culture and culture of entitlement.
Theres travel cancellation insurance and all types of insurance.
Irish ferries cancelled 2 sailings on us, leaving us to drive from Dublin to Rosslare at our own cost and back from Rosslare instead of Dublin at our own costs. Both times they offered €150 vouchers for each booking but will now only redeem 1x€150 voucher. They are taking the pi$$ in general on this one and need to be held to task.
Irish Ferries gave €150 compensation to all passengers already. Plus a free bottle of wine and box of chocolates and finally, 3 days extra holidays. I have been using Irish Ferries for the past 20 years, for my annual trip to France. Never had a problem that wasn’t quickly resolved. I see no reason to change now.
We did use Brittany Ferries one year,(were visiting friends on Cork on the way) an Irish owned company travelling between two Euro countries, yet all transactions on board were in Sterling!
Gotta
A poor company bad PR.
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