Mick O'Reilly found it "absolutely terrible" to be excluded from the recent pay talks, but at least he knows who his friends are, he tells Chris Dooley, Industry and Employment Correspondent
He hasn't gone away, you know. The sacked regional secretary of the ATGWU, Mr Mick O'Reilly, hopes to be back early next year after a lengthy fight to have his dismissal overturned.
He might even, he jokes, be back in time to join the negotiations on a new social partnership deal, which he expects will resume soon.
Isolated among prominent trade unionists, Mr O'Reilly has consistently opposed partnership agreements, and believes workers "should be trusted" to negotiate their own pay rises.
Free collective bargaining does not, he argues, have to result in strikes and industrial chaos. "Workers are not going to wreck their own companies."
Having had to watch the recent pay talks from outside the gates of Government Buildings, he says, has been "absolutely terrible".
"I really would love to have been in the talks. I have to say the crisis that some of us predicted is being felt around the table now.
"It's a real crisis for the trade union leadership in the sense that we have the lowest levels of investment in public services in Europe and the biggest gap between rich and poor. And yet this has all happened under what have been called 'partnership agreements'."
Trade unions, he believes, should "tell people honestly that they cannot influence the social and economic agenda of this Government". He strongly disputes the assertion of the ICTU president, Sen Joe O'Toole, that there will be "chaos" in the absence of a new agreement.
"I think he should have more faith in the ability of ordinary workers to make sensible decisions about their places of employment and to make judgments about their own living standards."
Mr O'Reilly believes his anti-establishment views, rather than the "trivial" charges laid against him by the T&GWU leadership in London, were the real reason for his dismissal.
He also claims his election to the most senior position in the union in Ireland in 1997 caused resentment in some quarters. "I was the first regional secretary in the 80-year history of the transport union who came from the Republic, and there were difficulties over that."
The circumstances of his initial suspension caused him great hurt and the date remains etched on his mind.
"On June 26th (2001) I came back from my holidays, did a brief interview with Peter Cluskey (then of RTÉ) and headed up to Belfast for a routine meeting which I had organised. When I arrived all my colleagues were there. Nobody suspected what was about to take place. I was called into a room, I was handed a letter, I was told to leave the building, I was told I wasn't to speak to any other officer, I was told I wasn't to speak to any other member of the staff, I was told none of the union services were available to me, I was told not to speak to any third party with which the union had a relationship, and I was told I would be given the reasons for all of this later."
He had had "absolutely no idea" that this was about to happen. "There had certainly been arguments and tensions, but nothing out of the ordinary cut and thrust of the trade union movement."
It was a further month before he received a list of the charges, a day after he read them in a Sunday newspaper.
"That was the worst period. The month I spent hanging in the wind, trying to figure out what the issues were."
The list of charges, when it finally arrived, was long and varied, ranging from his alleged misinterpretation of the rules for union ballots to the manner in which the Irish Locomotive Drivers' Association was recruited en bloc to the ATGWU.
Mr O'Reilly and the union's Northern Ireland organiser, Mr Eugene McGlone, who was dismissed at the same time in similar circumstances, challenged each of the charges at subsequent hearings in London, chaired by the T&GWU general secretary, Mr Bill Morris.
The process concluded in their dismissals being confirmed last May. One of the grounds of the two men's appeal, which is due to conclude early this year, is that Mr Morris, having suspended them in the first place, should not have acted as "judge and jury" in the case.
The appeal is being heard by three members of the union's executive.
Since the action against the two, there has been a dramatic shift to the left in the power base of the T&GWU, with Mr Tony Woodley, a close associate of Mr O'Reilly, having been elected deputy general secretary this year.
A number of other elections to key posts have also been won by supporters of Mr O'Reilly.
Mr Woodley is now favourite to succeed Mr Morris, who retires by next June at the latest, to the top post. If that happens, Mr O'Reilly expects a resolution to be found and both himself and Mr McGlone to be reinstated.
Married with two grown-up daughters, Mr O'Reilly lives in Drimnagh, in Dublin. Since May, he has been surviving with the help of collections by union officers, he says.
"What happened on June 26th knocked me off my uppers, but I'm back in shape now," he says.
"In one sense it's been a marvellous experience. I'm one of the few people on this earth who absolutely knows who his friends are. The support I've got from people has been very uplifting.
"I've come through it. I've sustained my beliefs, and no matter what happens I will remain a socialist, a trade unionist and a republican."
He believes, though they may not say it publicly, that a number of senior "establishment" trade unionists recognise he has been missed in the partnership negotiations.
" There used to be some radical voices in the trade union movement. It's very quiet now."
Not for long more, perhaps.