Sometimes a contracts claim is so small that it falls between the cracks of the mainstream media. But no claim is too small — or too contracts-adjacent — to escape the Friday Frivolity feature.
As Lois Kapila reports in The Dublin InQuirer, on a wet night in November 2024, Mr. Ryan and the rest of the passengers on the Dublin Bus were told that they had to get off due to an intoxicated passenger. The next bus had been taken out of service due to a maintenance issue, leaving Mr. Ryan no choice but to walk for thirty minutes in lashing rain to get home. To be fair to Dublin Bus, we note that it was that bracing Irish rain, fresh from the ocean!
Mr. Ryan sought the return of his fare, but he did not run to small claims court, nor did he take a bus. Rather, he spent two years exhausting less formal remedies — emails and letters to Dublin Bus, the National Transport Authority (NTA), the Department of Transport, and the ombudsman — and received only frustrating responses. The NTA claimed to have a policy not to refund Leap Visitor Cards, a pre-paid travel card, but Mr. Ryan did not use a Leap Visitor Card.
The NTA’s response recalls that of Death in Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life” when one of his new charges objects that she didn’t eat the salmon mousse.
Mr. Ryan is not an unreasonable person. He seeks only the recovery of his fare, €2.75. The small claims court ruled in his favor. Dublin Bus did not return the reporter’s inquiries, and so we do not know whether an appeal is in the offing.
The story has comedic elements, but one also has to admire the lengths to which Mr. Ryan went to get a hearing before an impartial body. There are real issues here about contract compliance and the seeming unaccountability of a public service company.
The company has a new complaint portal, the Consolidated Contact Centre (CCC), but we don’t know how well it is functioning. That system is still being “bedded in,” and data collected is being used exclusively for internal purposes at this point. In Mr. Ryan’s case, the CCC confirmed that there was an intoxicated customer and that the follow-on service had been taken out of service due to a maintenance issue. The CCC explained that the company “was not in a position” to offer a refund.
That is odd, given that the contract between the NTA and operators such as Dublin Bus provides that operators are supposed to refund fares that cannot be completed due to service interruptions. But the NTA did not want to get involved in the dispute between Dublin Bus and Mr. Ryan. However, its contract with Dublin Bus suggests otherwise. I suppose it makes sense that the NTA would not oversee compliance on such a granular level.
Mr. Ryan filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking data on travel interruptions. The NTA responded that it does not keep such data. The NTA has data of “lost kilometers,” but it seems not to track things that really matter to passengers – such as the availability of follow-on service buses and the frequency of “ghost buses,” which appear on the schedule and app but not on the roads. Mr. Ryan thinks he is not alone. He thinks the problems are so widespread that Dublin Bus would be in financial difficulty if they paid the refunds that their contract with the NTA obligates them to pay. That’s why they refuse.
But Mr. Ryan can now afford to consider the matter philosophically. He got his €2.75 and something much more valuable than that: peace of mind. So if you are inclined to order a pint this weekend, raise your glass in honor of Mr. Ryan, a hero of consumer advocacy.