The First Minister appears to have dampened hopes of a rail service connecting north and south Wales – while figures have revealed the huge sum of pay-out costs for delayed trains.

In an interview with Al Jazeera over the weekend, Labour’s Mark Drakeford said ‘easy routes between north and south have never been possible’ in Wales.

Welsh Liberal Democrats leader and MS for Mid and West Wales, Jane Dodds, has slammed the remarks while criticising the reliability of rail services since their nationalisation in 2021.

A Freedom of Information (FoI) request has revealed that in the first ten months of this year, the newly nationalised Transport for Wales (TfW) franchise paid out nearly £1million in delay repayments.

The Cambrian News has submitted further FoI requests to see how much delay repayments for travellers on the Cambrian Line have cost TfW – and to see how many cancellations there have been on the network over the last few years.

Mr Drakeford was asked by Al Jazeera why Welsh resdients needed to go out of Wales and into England in order to travel efficiently between the north and south of the country.

He said: “In the end it’s just the nature of our geography.

“We’re a mountainous country. I sometimes read it said that if you flattened Wales out, we’d be maybe as big as France.

“It’s just that all our land is hilly up and down - and easy routes between north and south have never been possible.

“So, we manage. We have an effective train service, you can drive – it’s not the most straightforward of routes.

“But we’re used to it, it’s what we’ve dealt with for 2,000 years.”

Ms Dodds rubbished suggestions that Wales has an effective rail network and produced the FoI figures as evidence.

She said: “Labour has promised for years to deliver more reliable rail services, yet these figures certainly suggest that isn’t what is happening.

“TfW has racked up £976,660 in payments to rail users for delays and that’s only those who go through the process of applying for a refund.

“There may be many thousands more who have been similarly inconvenienced but not claimed.

“The Welsh Labour Government need to tell taxpayers how much money has been set aside to meet delay repay payments and when they think they will have this under control.

“Ministers are now directly responsible for the service that commuters and tourists get on our railway but so far they seem to be taking a hands-off approach.

“Commuters and rail users need a service that they can rely on if we are to tempt people out of private cars. For the good of the planet, the Government must ensure that all services are running once more and that the trains are arriving on time.

“The Welsh Liberal Democrats want to see heavily discounted fares introduced along the lines of schemes introduced in Germany and Spain as well as a great frequency of services and better interconnections with other public transport options such as buses.”

A TfW spokesperson said: “Our staff work incredibly hard to ensure trains run on time or as close to their scheduled time as possible.

“Unfortunately, delays and cancellations are sometimes unavoidable due to circumstances beyond our control such as bad weather or incidents on the network. When delays do occur, we will offer fair and appropriate compensation.

“We understand delays and cancellations are very frustrating for customers and TfW is investing heavily in new trains and infrastructure to improve performance across the Wales and Borders network.

“If customers are affected by delays or cancellations on our services, we would encourage them to contact us directly to ensure they receive whatever compensation they are entitled to. They can do this by visiting www.tfw.wales”