By Denise O’Donoghue Christmas can be a hectic time for anyone navigating public transport to get home. Luckily, Bus Éireann have provided their Christmas and New Year timetables so you can get planning your journey early. "Our new Christmas service schedule has been designed to ensure we connect our customers to who and what matters to them - helping to facilitate more shopping, more visits to friends and relatives and more frequent services to the airports and Christmas markets as we gear up for the festive season," said Stephen Kent, Bus Éireann CEO. "We wish all of our customers safe and enjoyable travel and look forward to bringing further service improvements across our network of routes in 2020."

Christmas period

Buses will run every day nationwide across the Christmas holiday period - apart from Christmas Day - with services operating standard timetables with some slight exceptions. On Christmas Eve all departures up to 9pm will operate to a normal timetable. However, the following routes will not operate:

• Route X1 - 7.45pm Belfast-Dublin;

 

• Route 2 - 9pm Dublin Airport-Wexford; 1830 & 2030 Wexford-Dublin Airport;

   

• Route 4 - 8pm Waterford-Dublin;

   

• Route 23 - 8pm Dublin-Sligo;

   

• Route 32 - 8.45pm Dublin-Letterkenny; 1945 Letterkenny-Dublin;

   

• Route 100X - 8.30pm Dundalk-Dublin;

   

• Route 871/890 - Expressway Eurolines services to and from London.

  A small number of Expressway services will operate after 9pm, including Route 4 from Dublin Airport to Waterford at 10pm, Route 30 from Dublin to Donegal at 9.30pm and Route 100X from Dublin to Dundalk at 9.40pm. A full Sunday schedule will operate across the entire network on St Stephen's Day. Additional departures will operate from Belfast to Dublin at 4.45am and from Dublin to Belfast at 5.15pm and 7.15pm. However, the following departures will not operate on December 26:

• Route X1 -6.15pm, 8.15pm, 9.15pm, 10.15pm and 11.15pm Dublin-Belfast; 5.30am, 7.45pm and 10pm Belfast-Dublin;

 

• Route X2A - 10.15am, 4.15pm, 5.15pm and 7.15pm Dublin-Belfast; 6.45am and 2.45pm Belfast-Dublin;

   

• Route X5 - 9.30am, 11.30am, 1.30pm, 3.30pm, 5.30pm and 7.30pm Dublin-Newry; 8.15am and 10.15am Belfast-Dublin; 9.15am Belfast-Newry; 7.15am, 1.15pm, 3.15pm and 5.15pm Newry-Dublin;

   

• Route 32 - 12.30am Letterkenny-Dublin;

   

• Route 40 - 9.40am Cork-Waterford; 10.40am Cork-Rosslare;

   

• Route 51 - 7.25am and 8.35am Limerick-Cork; 7.25am and 8.25am Limerick-Galway;

   

• Route 64 - 6.25am Donegal-Sligo; 6.35am and 8.10am Letterkenny-Derry; 7.35am Sligo-Derry;

   

• Route 871/890 - Expressway Eurolines services to and from London.

  From December 27 to 30 inclusive, a full regular schedule of services will operate on all routes.

New Year

All services will be running a normal timetable up until 10pm on New Year's Eve, but the 871/890 - Expressway Eurolines services to and from London which will not be operating. All Expressway services will operate as normal on New Year's Eve and Route 220 will resume from midnight on New Year's Day and operate a full timetable.

Cork late-night services

Christmas shoppers in Cork are in luck as Bus Éireann will provide additional late-night services on two routes. Extra services to Midleton and Blarney on Route 215 and 261 will be available on Friday, Dec 6; Saturday, Dec 7; Friday, Dec 13; Saturday, Dec 14; Friday, Dec 20; and Saturday, Dec 21. Services will depart to Midleton and Blarney from St Patrick's Street at 1am, 2am and 3am.