CIE management can expect to come under increasing political pressure to avoid a serious confrontation with its unions. "A national transport strike in the run up to Christmas would be politically disastrous," a Government source said yesterday. "It's the last thing we need."
Earlier, nearly 2,000 CIE workers, most of them bus and train drivers, marched on the group headquarters at Heuston station. Union leaders handed in a letter for the chief executive, Mr Michael McDonnell, protesting at plans to introduce a series of viability plans which will see 800 jobs shed by the group and savings of £44 million a year.
They had also intended to march on the Department of Transport, Energy and Communications to present a similar letter to the Minister, Mr Lowry. They agreed to a request from union leaders to defer the second half of the march to minimise bus and rail disruption.
The dispute is understood to have been discussed during Thursday's Cabinet meeting, where Ministers were briefed on prospects for a new national agreement to succeed the Programme for Competitiveness and Work.
A government source said: "There's recognition that change is necessary, but there is also a feeling that management was being totally inflexible and unimaginative about how to achieve it."
Backbench TDs in the Labour Party and Democratic Left began expressing concerns about the threatened dispute after SIPTU, the largest of the CIE unions, lobbied members of both parties earlier this week.
The Minister of State for Transport, Energy and Communications, Mr Emmet Stagg, told the SIPTU delegation that neither Mr Lowry nor himself was consulted in relation to the decisions by the CIE board on the viability plan at the beginning of this month.
Mr Stagg also told the unions that, as far as he was concerned, there had been "a declaration of war issued against the workers in CIE, particularly by the new style management at Heuston station".
Yesterday Mr Stagg confirmed his remarks and went on to say; "It is certainly my view that CIE management must draw back from the brink. If they have proposals they should put them to the unions and discuss them to the point of agreement".
A spokesman for Mr Lowry said: "On a narrow interpretation you can say that Mr Lowry wasn't consulted, but the broad outlines of the company's proposals were well signalled". For the moment Mr Lowry would not be intervening in the situation, he said, but he was "keeping a very close eye on the situation".
Mr Eric Byrne TD (Democratic Left) said senior CIE management behaviour "is more akin to that of an American multinational moving jobs around like pieces on a chess hoard than to that of an Irish State owned company".
The Fianna Fail spokesman on transport, Mr Seamus Brennan, accused Mr Lowry of abdicating his responsibilities. "Chaos is looming across a range of services," Mr Brennan said. The Minister should meet the unions immediately, he added.
CIE's head of programmes and projects, Dr Ray Byrne, said in response to political criticism that "the last thing CIE wants is a strike". The savings had to be achieved but the manner of achieving them was negotiable, he added. The company door remained open for talks.
The threatened strike at Bus Eireann on Monday has been deferred for at least 48 hours because of a judicial review being held by the High Court of the legality of changes management wants to introduce at Bus Eireann.