Thousands of intending passengers face serious disruption to their post-St Patrick's Day travel plans due to a threatened 24-hour stoppage by air, bus and rail workers.
A one-day strike by SIPTU members in the three CIÉ companies, to take place on Thursday, March 18th, was announced yesterday. The union's Aer Rianta strike committee meets today and is expected to agree on a similar stoppage at Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports on the same day.
If the strikes go ahead, they are likely to cause a complete shutdfdown of the airports and public transport services.
The strike decision was taken even though separate talks on the future of Aer Rianta and CIÉ between unions and the Department of Transport had been continuing. The future of those discussions is now in doubt.
March 18th was initially targeted by Aer Rianta workers as a potential day of disruption because of a major EU presidency meeting, to be attended by OECD education ministers, in Dublin that day.
Announcing its CIÉ strike decision yesterday, SIPTU industrial secretary Mr Michael Halpenny said the action was in protest at "the lack of meaningful progress" in the talks.
However, the other main union involved in the CIÉ talks, the National Bus and Rail Union, was satisfied that the talks were making progress.
"It would be hypocritical of me to say otherwise," said the NBRU assistant general secretary, Mr Michael Faherty. "Certainly compared with where we were a couple of weeks ago, progress was being made. But maybe other people don't see it that way."
The SIPTU decision to strike, he said, had come "as a bit of surprise".
The most recent talks on CIÉ, which are being chaired by Mr Kevin Foley of the Labour Relations Commission, took place on Monday, and the two sides were to meet again on March 18th.
Mr Halpenny said his union's CIÉ strike committee was also concerned that the talks lacked credibility because of comments made by the Minister for Transport, Mr Brennan, at the Fianna Fáil Ardfheis. The Minister, he said, had stated he was still wedded to his original view that franchising was the way to open up the bus market to competition.
"The members had previously deferred industrial action at the Minister's invitation to enter talks to consider alternatives to franchising and his weekend remarks are seen as undermining that commitment," he said.
A spokeswoman for Mr Brennan, however, said the decision to strike made no sense.
Seven meetings had taken place under Mr Foley's chairmanship and further meetings were planned, so there was no basis for the action SIPTU was taking.
Unions are opposed to the Minister's plan to dismantle CIÉ and franchise out 25 per cent of the existing Dublin Bus market to private operators.
They are also unhappy at the plan to break up Aer Rianta and form separate management companies for Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports.