New Irish Ferries ship

Having looked at the schedule for the Holyhead route from January, which was only loaded in the last few days, and only runs up to mid April, it's clear that there is a significant reduction in sailings during that period, the only vessel that's scheduled for most of that time at present is Ulysses, so effectively, they have massively downgraded the route for the 3 and a half months, and WB Yeats is not appearing in any schedules at all.

I can't decide if this is due to lack of demand, or lack of vessels to service the routes, they always do the annual maintenance during the first 3 months, my suspicion is that the entry into service of WB Yeats is going to be a lot later than was anticipated, so they are not committing to any services by that vessel until after Mid April.

It is possible that there have been issues during trials that are going to have to be resolved, and there is no telling how long that might take, depending on what has been found in recent weeks.

There is also the very real confusion around the eventual outcome of the Brexit scenario, depending on how that eventually works out, it's altogether possible that the ferry companies will need significant extra capacity from Ireland to Europe direct, and clearly Irish Ferries are not about to reveal their contingency plans at the moment.

I can't recall such a reduced schedule being offered on the Holyhead route for a long time, it seems strange that they have cut back so dramatically, unless their maintenance issues are more complex than has been revealed, which will mean more dry dock time than has been the case in recent years.