Members of the ILDA turned up in strength at a general meeting of the association in Dublin yesterday to urge their leaders to continue to fight for their demands and not to give in to pressure from the Government and Iarnrod Eireann in the seven-week-old dispute.
"Even I was surprised by the strength of the resolve shown by members," said Mr Brendan Ogle, the association's executive secretary. After the meeting, some 80 train drivers marched to Heuston station and handed in a copy of the meeting's resolution to the company.
The meeting was particularly incensed over what the ILDA described as "the most unusual collaboration between Fianna Fail and the Labour Party to block the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Public Enterprise and Transport hearing submissions on the dispute".
The resolution handed in at Heuston said: "They restated their reasons for their opposition, which are based on safety concerns and also relate to the infringement of the employment rights of ILDA members who were never consulted about the changes."
The meeting had rejected "the continuing spin by Iarnrod Eireann, SIPTU and the NBRU" that the dispute was about any other issue.
The association had spent months trying to bring attention to "serious safety issues" and driver conditions: "Virtually every attempt to find a solution has been thwarted. The problems with the `New Deal' will not go away."
The ILDA said it was making one final appeal to the company and "to Ministers Harney and O'Rourke to establish a realistic and imaginative avenue" through which a solution could be found.
However, the company said its position was unchanged. Iarnrod Eireann believed up to 30 ILDA members were now reporting for work and that only 98 out of its total membership of 128 were not working, a spokesman said yesterday.