Twenty years ago gardai got the sniffles. It was 1978 when Garda bodies first threatened to take mass sick-leave or ban overtime in their demands for a 40 per cent pay increase. In 1998 the bug finally took a hold and got a name.

Blue Flu will remain a lasting legacy of the year of the most militant industrial action in the history of the Garda Siochana. How else would a similar action by train drivers have been dubbed choo-choo flu? Prison officers joked that if they ever took such action it will would be dubbed screw flu.

The process began on April 1st, a date that more than one Garda leader would say was grimly appropriate. The Garda Representative Association leaders left official pay talks after a 5.5 per cent offer. Then a protest march on the Dail exceeded even the most optimistic predictions by the leaders of the association. Two and a half thousand GRA members were expected to take to the streets. In the event almost half the membership, or more than 3,500, marched. The GRA leaders did not need to be told twice that the grassroots were angry.

They responded with a Blue Flu Day on May 1st, when more then 4,500 rank-andfile gardai did not turn up for duty. The force took a hammering by the media, and GRA leaders were accused of leading their members in a mass lie.

That day, members of the Special Branch were involved in foiling a raid on a Securicor van near Ashford, Co Wicklow, during which one of the raiders was shot dead. The action followed a number of successful anti-terrorist operations by the force and large drug seizures by the National Drugs Unit.

In the view of Garda management, the timing of Blue Flu could not have been more ironic. The public opinion of the force should have been at an all-time high, with a 10 per cent drop in crime rates in 1997 continuing into 1998.

Various arms of the force, including the Criminal Assets Bureau and the Bureau of Fraud Investigation were having unprecedented success against criminals. And the Government was prepared to foot a massive overtime bill that would exceed the £44 million spent on overtime in 1997.

THE following month the association's annual conference was dominated by the single issue of pay. The leadership of the GRA was re-elected at the conference, in a move it believed signalled support for the militancy of its demands.

In the function room of Jury's hotel in Cork, delegate after delegate hammered the podium to demand their negotiators get tough with the Government. The GRA had demanded 39 per cent and told their members they would get 15 per cent in a firstround offer.

The dispute finally came to a head in the early hours of June 12th, when the GRA president, John Healy, called a lightning strike for the following day. The association's own press release had stated that 48 hours' notice would be given. This was much more serious than May 1st, as members of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors said they would not cover for their junior colleagues.

Commissioner Pat Byrne warned of a potential tragedy as stations around the State were left unmanned that Saturday. The Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, said the Government would be open to suggestions about including Garda bodies in national wage agreements. But the intervention seen to break the deadlock was made by the Taoiseach.

For the next weeks it all went quiet and the Tour de France went off without a hitch, having been one of the potential targets for industrial action. Back at the talks table, the negotiators agreed on a 9 per cent deal for the GRA and Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors, with different increases across grades and a once-off payment of around £3,000 for each member to sweeten the deal.

In August both associations voted to accept the deal, 83 per cent of AGSI members, and 68 per cent of GRA members.

1999 starts with what some participants are predicting could be the most difficult series of negotiations on new technology, civilianisation and changes to rosters. All three are highly sensitive, and the associations have already said they expect substantial increases for substantial change.

The issue of pay for senior officers still has to be sorted out with many rank-and-file gardai, sergeants and inspectors earning more than senior colleagues due to overtime payments. In 1997 a third of gardai took home more pay than their senior colleagues. The situation is a disincentive to officers going for promotion, but the associations of senior gardai do not have the large membership needed to force their position in the same way as the GRA and AGSI.

The three core issues for the next phase of pay talks were also on the agenda in 1978, when gardai first threatened to strike. A pay deal was eventually accepted in 1981 after the issues of rostering were dropped. Twenty-one years on this is just one of the nettles which has to be grasped in round two of the pay talks.