When the boats run

Departure and arrival times are taken from Irish Ferries’ own Sailing Schedule 2026 (Ireland – France), issued 7 August 2025 and stamped ‘Subject to Change’. All clock times are local, and France is one hour ahead of Ireland all year, so the ‘at sea’ column is the published times converted to a single time zone. Two details are worth knowing. First, the earlier 16:00 departure from Dublin only appears from late June to mid-September; the rest of the year the W.B. Yeats leaves at 16:30. Second, the schedule PDF and the live sailing-updates page do not agree on the Isle of Inisheer: the PDF gives a 14:30 arrival in Cherbourg, while the live board for late July 2026 showed the same sailing arriving 15:30. Assume the later figure if you have a train to catch. The published schedule also runs out at 30 November 2026 — no December dates have been issued.

Fares

These are Irish Ferries’ own published fares and packages, read off its France offers and Sail & Rail pages on 30 July 2026. Everything else on this route is dynamically priced: the plain one-way motorist fare, the cabin supplement and the kennel charge are only quoted inside the booking engine once you pick a date, and Irish Ferries does not publish a standing tariff for them anywhere on the site. Treat the figures above as the floor, not the average. One forward-looking offer worth noting: 20% off Economy and Flexi motorist, motorbike and foot fares for summer 2027 travel (24 May – 5 September 2027), if booked by 30 September 2026.

Route map

From Terminal 1 on Terminal Road South, out of the Liffey mouth and down the Irish Sea, around Land’s End and east into the Channel to the tip of the Cotentin peninsula.

Accessibility

Here the choice of ship stops being a matter of comfort. Irish Ferries’ own accessibility guide for the Ireland – France route states that the MV Isle of Inisheer is regrettably not suitable for wheelchair users. It has a single lift on the port side from the car deck, all facilities are on deck 7, and there are no adapted cabins. Now set that against the roster — because the two ships alternate on consecutive days, a wheelchair user effectively has an every-other-day service on a route sold as daily. That reading is ours, drawn from two of the operator’s own published statements rather than from anything the booking page says. Check the roster before you book.

The W.B. Yeats is a different proposition: four specially adapted wheelchair-accessible cabins on passenger deck 8 with direct lift access from the car deck, five lifts linking the car deck to the passenger areas, a gangway lift from deck 7 to deck 10 for foot passengers (in use during boarding only), wheelchair securing points on decks 10 and 11, a dedicated reduced-mobility seating area on deck 10, and three accessible toilets: one on deck 11 by the grey stairs, one on deck 10 beside reception and one on deck 10 by the purple stairs. Club Class has its own direct lift from the car deck to deck 10.

Two practical catches. Irish Ferries asks for at least two working days’ notice by email to disabilityofficer@irishferries.com, and wants ‘Passenger with Wheelchair’ added to the booking, so that your car can be parked near the lift. The number of wheelchair users carried per sailing is also capped by EU safety regulations. Neither of those is a job for the week before.

Taking a car

Measure the roof box before you book. Motorist fares cover vans up to 2.25m high and 6m long, and a second motorist band covers up to 2.60m high and 6m long; anything over 2.60m high or over 6m long is priced as freight. Vans used for non-commercial purposes are accepted up to those limits. Any vehicle of any size carrying goods or equipment for commercial purposes, though, must be booked through the Freight Commercial Team, and the company states plainly that in the event of an incorrect disclosure it reserves the right to re-price the booking and collect the difference, plus VAT, at check-in. The rules are unusually specific and Irish Ferries enforces them at the desk.

We could not find a page where Irish Ferries states whether animals may stay in the car on this route, so assume they may not and ring to confirm. What is clear is that here the ship decides what happens instead. On the W.B. Yeats, pets go into pre-booked kennels, one animal per unit, ranging from 51cm high by 75cm wide by 95cm deep up to 100cm high by 75cm wide by 95cm deep, with cat boxes also available; there are allocated visiting times during the crossing and you can take the dog for a short walk. The Isle of Inisheer has no kennels at all: pets go in a pre-booked designated pet cabin with access to an outside deck area, subject to availability. Either ship, the same paperwork. A maximum of five pets per booking applies, check-in is two hours before departure, and every animal needs an ISO-standard microchip, a valid EU pet passport or GB animal health certificate, and a rabies vaccination given at least 21 days before arrival. Dogs coming from France to Ireland also need tapeworm treatment 24 to 120 hours before arrival. Restricted breeds, and any dog that might bite, must be muzzled on deck.

Do you need to book?

Foot passengers are carried on this route, whatever you may have been told. Irish Ferries lists ‘on foot or cycling’ as a booking option, prices foot fares in its discount offers, and runs a dedicated Sail & Rail product for people without a car. What you cannot do is turn up and walk aboard: you are bussed or led across a link span, carrying your own bags.

A cabin is not compulsory either. Every booking includes a cabin or a reserved seat, and the Sail & Rail fare specifically includes an overnight reserved seat rather than a berth. In practice the W.B. Yeats was built with 435 cabins for 1,885 passengers and crew, so berths are the norm on this crossing rather than the exception. One perk does not travel: the priority loading Irish Ferries gives cabin bookers applies only to the Irish Sea routes, not to France. For 2026 travel a €300 deposit holds a sailing, with the balance due 60 days out; inside 60 days it is full payment up front, and the deposits are non-refundable.

Sailing conditions

Irish Ferries prints ‘subject to change’ on the schedule and, on a 19-hour open-water crossing of the western Channel, means it. The live Ireland – France sailing updates board is the thing to check on the day, because it lists each sailing by ship with a status against it. It is also the board that quietly contradicts the schedule PDF on when the Isle of Inisheer actually berths, which is reason enough to look at it even when nothing has gone wrong.

What you are owed when something does go wrong is set by EU Regulation 1177/2010, enforced in Ireland by the National Transport Authority. For a scheduled journey of 8 to 24 hours, which is exactly this route, an arrival delay of more than three hours entitles you to 25% of the ticket price back, and more than six hours to 50%. A delay of 90 minutes or more triggers free refreshments where available. If an overnight stay becomes necessary the carrier covers accommodation up to €80 per night for a maximum of three nights. Where the sailing is cancelled outright you choose between a full refund and re-routing to your destination at the earliest opportunity at no extra cost, one or the other, not both. Then the large exception — none of the compensation applies where the delay or cancellation was caused by weather conditions that endangered the safe operation of the ship. Complaints go to the carrier within two months of the sailing, and to the NTA (0818 294 015) if that fails.

Worth knowing

Before you board

Terminal 1, on Terminal Road South, is the Irish Ferries end of Dublin Port, shared with the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company. Stena Line is next door at Terminal 2. Point a satnav at ‘Dublin Ferry Terminal’ and it can put you in the wrong queue.

• Postal address for the satnav: Irish Ferries, Terminal Road South, Ferryport, Dublin 1, Eircode D01 P3K2. Irish Ferries publishes the position as 53°20’45”N, 6°11’39”W. Port office: 0818 310 100.
• Road works matter here. Alexandra Road, the historic way into the port, has been closed to all port-related traffic since 19 July 2025 and stays shut until autumn 2026, and Irish Ferries says so on its own directions page. Everything in and out goes via Promenade Road. The Dublin Port Tunnel still feeds straight in from the M1 and M50.
• Check-in closes 60 minutes before departure for cars, motorbikes, cyclists and foot passengers alike. Travelling with an animal makes it two hours, because pet passports are processed at the desk.
• Leaving the car behind: the terminal car park is run by Apcoa and paid by app or QR code, at €2 an hour, €9 a day, €50 a week. Clamping is enforced, including on the roadside spaces.
• Dublin Bus route 53 is the only scheduled public bus into Terminal 1. It runs from the Talbot Street terminus, standard city fares apply and Free Travel passes are accepted. Dublin Port confirms the 53 serves Terminal 1 specifically.
• Get the coach transfer right, because it is easy to describe wrongly. Irish Ferries points passengers at an express transfer run by Nolan Coaches from George’s Quay, seven days a week, €3 each way, cashless: book on the Nolan Coaches site or pay the driver by card. It is a contracted coach, not a Dublin Bus service, and it is not the same thing as the number 53.
• There is no DART or Irish Rail station at the port. Irish Ferries puts the nearest railway stations two miles away in the city centre. The closest rail-based option is the Luas Red Line terminus at The Point, opposite the port entrance on East Wall Road, and it is running again: services between Connolly and The Point resumed on 28 November 2025 after the George’s Dock bridge fire of August 2025 closed the section for three months. Dublin Port’s own page has not caught up, and still lists that stretch as suspended with replacement buses.
• At Dublin Port you do not simply walk aboard. Foot passengers are taken from the terminal to the ship either by a pedestrian link span or a shuttle bus, and Irish Ferries is explicit that you keep your luggage with you the whole way. There is no hold-baggage system.
• Sailing the other way instead? The short Welsh crossing from the same port is covered in our Dublin to Holyhead ferry guide.

Planning a day visit

There is no day trip here. At roughly 19 hours each way with a single daily departure, the fastest possible round trip is two nights at sea and one day in France. Take the 16:00 from Dublin, dock at 11:30, and the return sailing leaves Cherbourg at 16:30 the following afternoon: call it 28 hours ashore. Irish Ferries’ own answer to that arithmetic is the Wine Tasting Minicruise at €399 return for a car, two people and an inner cabin, on the 17 September and 15 October 2026 sailings and no others. Its France Short Breaks fare, from €465 return, caps the stay at six nights.

About the island

Read what the port authority publishes, then check it against the operator. Ports de Normandie still advertises Irish Ferries as three to four rotations a week to Dublin, while the operator’s own 2026 schedule is daily for most of the year. The port’s figure is out of date. Its other numbers are more useful: a 15-hectare terminal with three ro-ro bridges, handling roughly 600,000 cross-Channel passengers a year between Irish Ferries and Brittany Ferries, in service since 22 June 1994. Cherbourg is the working end of the Cotentin peninsula rather than a resort, and the terminal reflects that. Two berths, two operators: Irish Ferries ties up at the Gare Maritime (postal address: Irish Ferries, Gare Maritime, 50100 Cherbourg, tel. +33 2 33 23 44 44), Brittany Ferries at the Quai de Normandie a short distance away — follow the wrong sign on foot and you pay for it in walking. Get one more thing straight before you arrive. The Art Deco Gare Maritime Transatlantique, the 1933 building with the 240-metre glass roof that once took boat trains through to Paris, has not been a railway station since the 1990s; it is the Cité de la Mer museum. Trains leave from the ordinary town station on Avenue Jean-François Millet.

Continuing your journey

• Cherbourg’s town station is the end of the line from Paris. Irish Ferries states that regular services run to and from Paris Saint-Lazare via Caen. These are SNCF’s Intercités Normandie trains, and the run to Paris takes a little over three hours.
• Allow two hours between ship and train. That is not a rule of thumb. It is the condition Irish Ferries attaches to its own Sail & Rail bookings, which tells you plenty about how long disembarkation and the walk really take.
• On the distance from the ferry terminal to the station, the sources disagree badly: one puts the walk at about 1.5 miles, another at a 40-minute trudge. Neither Irish Ferries nor Ports de Normandie publishes a figure, and we could not confirm the free terminal-to-station shuttle that some travel sites mention. On foot with luggage, budget for a taxi.
• Coming from the south-east of Ireland instead? Brittany Ferries runs the other Irish crossing to the same French port: see Rosslare to Cherbourg.

Questions people ask