have irish rail moved dangerously close to getting modern?
 

http://www.irishexaminer.com/text/ireland/kfojmhidgbkf/

Examiner says Irish rail offering advance discounted tickets online - must be a catch somewhere....

Been ongoing since 2006 in some form or another http://www.railusers.ie/forum/showthread.php?t=13462

Are Irish Rail going to offer €10 Dublin to Cork fares again anytime soon? My mum and I are going over in September and she was wanting to go to Fota for the day. I looked online and the only fares are €19.99 per passenger each way, which we both agreed was kind of steep. :eek:

Whatever happened to the discounts mentioned on that examiner article? The way I understood it was that, the further ahead you book, the cheaper the fare but there seems to be no incentive for booking more than three days in advance from what I can see? :confused:

Thanks in advance for any info. :)

The €10 fare structure is gone since early June, not to say it wont come back but IMO it wont.

The new fare structure is fares range from €9.99 - €19.99 (route dependent) if you book 3 days in advance, then fares rise to €15.99 - €32.99 and if booked on day of travel fares rise to €21.99 - €43.99

Further Details:
http://www.irishrail.ie/cat_offers.jsp?i=4577

Yeah that was the thing I was looking at tonight. I've tried jigging the journey every which way to get a cheaper fare. In the UK, you can break up the journey. For example, if you are going from Ayr to Edinburgh, never ever get a ticket straight through because it will cost a bomb. Always get a ticket to Glasgow and then one from Glasgow to Edinburgh. It doesn't seem to work for Ireland though from what I've seen. :( Another bugbear is that there doesn't seem to be any senior concessions, only child ones.

I am quite impressed with the €9.99 fare to Waterford though. That is going to be one of my trips for the future so I hope the price is still available. :)

Thanks again for your help.:)

The current straightforward discounted fare structure is likely to remain with us for some time. Thats not to say that 9.99 to Cork may not reappear at some time.

Irish Rail is upgrading its booking system, to include several new features, including booking more than 28 days ahead so we might see something

Thanks for the info, I'll look out for that. :)