13 Mar 2018
Posted by Chris Jones 
St. Patrick’s Day is the biggest party of the year, with hundreds of thousands of people expected to be on the streets to celebrate on Saturday 17th March.
Many of you will be on the move around the country, so we’ve put together this guide to using public transport on the day.
Below, you will find details of schedule changes for Dublin Bus, Luas, Bus Éireann and Irish Rail services.
Click here for our comprehensive guide to St. Patrick’s Day events around the country.
Due to the volume of people expected to use public transport, our advice is to book ahead, plan your journey carefully in advance and leave plenty of extra time to get to your destination. Most of all, enjoy the weekend!
DUBLIN BUS
A Sunday service will operate on St Patrick’s Day, while there will be a number of diversions on routes between Friday 16th and Tuesday 20th March. Full details of these are available at the Dublin Bus website.
Nitelink will operate on the nights of Friday 16th and Saturday 17th, but there will be no Nitelink service on Sunday 18th March.
LUAS
Luas services on St. Patrick’s Day will run to a normal Saturday timetable, with the following exceptions:
On the Green Line, trams will only run from Brides Glen to St. Stephen’s Green and from Broombridge to Dominick between 6:30am and 6pm. Services will return to normal after 6pm, with the last trams as follows:
- From Brides Glen at midnight
- From Broombridge at 12:15am
- From St. Stephen’s Green at 12:43am
On the Red Line, services from Saggart/Tallaght will terminate at Smithfield after 10:45am. Normal service will resume at approx. 3pm, with the last trams as follows:
- From Tallaght at midnight
- From The Point at 12:30am
- From Saggart at 11:50am
- From Connolly at 6:49pm
Luas will operate a Sunday service on Monday 19th March.
IRISH RAIL
The following information applies to St. Patrick’s Day (Saturday 17th) only:
- A Sunday service will operate on DART and Commuter routes.
- There will be extra trains to and from Dublin city centre before and after the Festival Parade (which starts at midday) on the DART, Maynooth and Drogheda lines. Southbound special trains will operate from Pearse and northbound special trains from Connolly.
- Tara St station will remain closed until 4pm.
BUS ÉIREANN
The intercity Expressway services will run to their usual timetable on St. Patrick’s Day and on Sunday (except for college-only services). On Saturday and Sunday, Bus Éireann’s other services within towns and in rural areas will run to a Sunday timetable – again, except for college-only services. More information here.
