A late-night weekend Luas service for Dubliners looking to take full advantage of the festive season came into operation last night.
Running every 30 minutes between 1am and 3am on Friday and Saturday nights from now until Christmas, the new service costs €4 for a single ticket. The late-night service will also run every weekday during the week before Christmas.
On average, the Luas carries more than 80,000 passengers daily; however, a spokesman said that last year the busiest day for the service was December 22nd, with more than 111,000 passengers.
Dublin Bus has been running a seven-day Nitelink service at 12.30am and 2am in the capital since Operation Freeflow began last Monday.
This will be extended from Thursday, December 14th, until Saturday, December 23rd, as well as on New Year's Eve, when all 24 Nitelink routes will operate nightly from 12.30am to 4.30am. The fare is €4 for short routes and €6 for the longer routes.
Iarnród Éireann said it had added an extra morning service from Galway to Dublin Heuston, departing from 7am today and again on December 9th.
It also expects demand for rail services to the capital to be high between Tuesday and Saturday of next week. This is due to a number of events taking place in Dublin, including concerts by George Michael and Cliff Richard at The Point, and seasonal shopping.
As a result, additional trains will operate from Cork and Limerick to Dublin on those days. Services from Cork start at 10:30am, and 10:45am from Limerick. However, the spokeswoman said there were no plans to operate late-night Dart services over the Christmas period, due to a lack of public demand.
This weekend thousands of visitors are expected to attend Motorshow Ireland, which opened at the RDS Simmonscourt yesterday and runs until tomorrow.