Aer Lingus will make its voluntary severance package available to all 1,600 employees who have applied. But the £40 million (€50.79 million) deal will only be activated if a majority of the 6,300 workforce votes to accept other aspects of the survival plan, including a 15-month pay freeze and new work practices

SIPTU has begun balloting members on the survival plan. The result of the ballot should be known on Saturday.

Staff applying for voluntary severance, or early retirement, have until Monday to withdraw their applications. After that, interviews will begin with the applicants and they will be given details of their individual entitlements. The firm had indicated earlier it might not be possible to find an easy "fit" between those wishing to leave and job functions to be shed. Yesterday a spokesman said analysis of applications had reached a stage where the firm was happy to accept them all.

By doing so, Aer Lingus avoids a confrontation with the unions over compulsory redundancies and creates a large constituency automatically in favour of the survival plan, as amended by the Labour Relations Commission. Further applications are expected from staff based abroad which, combined with natural wastage, is expected to bring the total to round 1,800 or 90 per cent of the company target.

Major problems remain because of delays in finalising the details of the employee share option plan (ESOP), which will give employees 14.9 per cent of the company. Until the letter outlining the scheme is sent to the unions, IMPACT, which represents pilots and cabin crew, says it will not ballot members on the survival plan.

The Aer Lingus board meets next Monday to review progress on the survival plan, the ESOP and the ballots. The director of corporate affairs, Mr Dan Loughrey, said the firm was becoming "increasingly concerned that IMPACT at this stage has not started balloting its members".

He said the firm was happy with the ESOP arrangements agreed in outline last week and detailed by the secretary general to the Government, Mr Dermot McCarthy, and other senior officials. Delays in balloting left the firm in "a very serious situation". He welcomed that SIPTU had begun balloting.

An IMPACT spokesman said: "Our position is that we'll go to ballot once everything is in the pot, including the ESOP." There were local problems involving flight rosters and other operational issues still to be clarified, but the ESOP had to be finalised.

The IMPACT spokesman said the LRC proposals specified that discussions on the ESOP should be finalised simultaneously with discussions on the survival plan. If there were delays, they were due to the Government failing to finalise the document.

SIPTU national industrial secretary Mr Noel Dowling said his union was pressing ahead with a ballot on the plan, on the assumption that the letter from the Government would be along the lines agreed last Friday. If it later emerged that the ESOP terms contravened the proposals of the LRC, the union would ballot members again. The main delay in finalising the document is due to concerns at the Department of Public Enterprise that Aer Lingus not be committed to financial costs it cannot meet or that might jeopardise its viability. Among the details at issue are how much the company may be obliged to pay for the 4.7 per cent of shares held by company employees.

On Monday, Aer Lingus chief executive Mr Willie Walsh, who favours a larger ESOP for the workforce, met senior civil servants at his own request in Government Buildings to outline his own concerns about the ESOP.