refund advice needed

[deFaoite]

I made 2 separate on-line bookings for 2 people to travel from Dublin to Cork last Friday (11/6 at 19:00) and back on Sunday (13/6 at 19:30). I collected the Dublin to Cork tickets from the ticket collection machine at Heuston station (as specified in the booking) at approximately 18:30 with the credit card used to make the booking. Unfortunately, I didn't take a close look at the tickets. The train was delayed and didn't leave until after 20:00, without the tickets being checked (of course we never found out why the train was delayed for over an hour!).

On Sunday evening I went to the ticket collection machine at Kent station in Cork. On inserting the credit card and subsequently the booking reference, it stated that the booking was invalid. I brought the printout of the booking information to the ticket desk. We were told that the tickets for the train back from Cork to Dublin had been printed in Dublin on the Friday evening. At that stage I assumed that I had left those two extra tickets in the machine at Heuston. We were then told that we had no choice but to buy 2 single tickets to Dublin at 66 euro each (on top of 36 each already paid!), which we did, and that we could apply for a refund on returning to Dublin. We later found one of the tickets which I had been collected from the machine on the Friday in Heuston - it was a one way ticket from Cork to Dublin for Sunday 13th! The wrong tickets had printed in Dublin and since they weren't checked on boarding because of the delay, the error was never noticed.

I know we should have checked the tickets ourselves but since you indicate the station for collection on booking, it never occurred to me that the machine in Heuston might print the tickets for the journey from Cork to Dublin! Do we have a case for claiming a refund and if so how should we go about it?