AT least 500,000 people are expected to travel into, out of and around the State for the Easter bank holiday weekend. According to transport companies, thousands of holiday makers have set off for destinations on the Continent while hundreds have already left for Easter breaks in the United States.
Those staying in Ireland can look forward to a dry weekend with some sun at times. Today temperatures are expected to be about 12C rising to 13 or 14C tomorrow and Monday. Met Eireann says the south will get most of the sunshine.
Cloud will be "hit and miss" in other areas and, although it will, not be "exceptionally warm", it will be pleasant in most areas with little or no wind.
At Christmas most traffic arrives in Ireland for the holiday, but at Easter more travellers are heading out of the State. Airlines have reported a huge increase in continental traffic and Aer Lingus says it expects 9,000 passengers to travel to and from the US, a rise of 17 per cent.
According to Aer Rianta, more than 140,000 passengers are expected to travel through Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports and 160 flights have been added to cope with the demand.
Irish Ferries says almost 4,000 passengers would travel to France over the weekend. Some 100,000 bus passengers and 180,000 rail passengers were expected to travel inter city at the weekend.
Bus Eireann says most normal weekday inter city services will run today, but a number of services tomorrow, usually geared to cater for returning weekend travellers, will be cancelled.
On Easter Monday bus and rail services will generally operate as, on Sunday with a number of alterations and extra services to cater, for people returning to towns and cities that evening. DART and suburban train services will operate as normal today. On Easter Monday services will run on a Sunday timetable.
Clocks will go forward one hour to summer time at 1 a.m. tomorrow, giving an extra hour of daylight.
