A breakthrough by Dublin Corporation in the Ballymun flats lifts saga was announced in the High Court yesterday.
Mr Frank Callanan, counsel for the local authority, told Mr Justice Geoghegan that a Northern Ireland lifts maintenance company would begin limited repair operations at the north Dublin complex next Monday.
Mr Eddie Walsh SC, for the tenants, told the court that on this basis their motion to commit the Lord Mayor and city councillors to prison for failure to comply with a Supreme Court order could be adjourned generally with liberty to apply.
Mr Callanan said the Army had provided technical and non-technical assistance and would be continuing and increasing that assistance at the corporation's request.
He said the present application had arisen from the fact that the tenants had identified two companies which seemed to be prepared to provide lift maintenance services. One was an English company and the other was a Northern Ireland firm.
Mr Callanan said current indications were that the English company might not be prepared to assist but the Northern Ireland firm would. A verbal contract had been entered into between it and the corporation which would provide some lift maintenance repair services from Monday.
He told the court the assistance the Northern firm could provide would be limited, because of the company's obligations to its existing customers which had to take priority. Efforts would continue to bring on board the English company also.
Mr Callanan said the corporation had retained the services of the Northern firm in the light of the Supreme Court order but had done so with reservations which related to the risk of aggravating the national industrial lifts maintenance dispute and of widening the area of that dispute.
"The corporation must therefore retain its freedom of terminating the services of the Northern Ireland company and, if retained, the services of the English company, should that become for any reason necessary," he said.
Legal costs were reserved to the trial of the tenants' action against the corporation.