Fuel factor forces Irish Ferries to reduce cross-water trips

The cost of fuel has been highlighted as one of the reasons why Irish Ferries decided, on Tuesday, January 24th, to cancel one of its daily round trips from Dublin to Britain.

From the week of Monday, January 30th, the company will only have four round trips a day instead of the usual five. Tony Kelly, marketing manager of Irish Ferries, said that the cancellation of one of the sailings will reduce capacity on the Dublin to Holyhead route by 7%.
At the moment, Irish Ferries has two ships on the Dublin to Holyhead route. These are the Jonathan Swift, which is able to carry around 200 cars and focuses only on the tourism market. The Ulysess, meanwhile, caters for the freight market and has the capacity for 1,300 cars.

Mr Kelly said the company had decided to cut one of its Jonathan Swift's daily sailings because, as a faster ship, it used more fuel than the Ulysess.
"Looking at the car market in the second half of last year, we figured we could manage quite well with four departures from Dublin.

"The Swift, being a faster craft, does consume considerably more fuel and therefore, with the state of the market, we considered this to be a prudent move," he said.
Irish sea passenger volumes during 2005 as competition from low-cost airlines cut into the industry's markets.