Two separate sets of talks to be held this weekend will decide the immediate future of the rail service in the Republic.
Today, the SIPTU national negotiating team will meet in Dublin to discuss a revised offer from Iarnrod Eireann to line maintenance workers. The revised offer significantly drops a previous insistence on night working and addresses concerns about pay and conditions.
While SIPTU was not prepared to comment on the likely outcome of today's meeting, hopes were high in Iarnrod Eireann that the revised offer would be accepted.
However, hopes for a positive response from the executive of the Irish Locomotive Drivers' Association (ILDA) to proposals for joint intervention by the Labour Court and the Labour Relations Commission (LRC) are not so high.
On Sunday, the ILDA executive will meet in the Tullamore Court Hotel in Co Offaly to discuss the LRC/Labour Court initiative.
Yesterday the executive secretary of the ILDA, Mr Brendan Ogle, reiterated his point of view that asking drivers to return to work before their concerns, particularly those on safety aspects, posed a significant difficulty.
Mr Ogle has delivered a position paper to both bodies indicating the conditions under which the ILDA would be prepared to return to work. However he has declined, in advance of an announcement today, to outline what those conditions are.
Mr Ogle has also circulated a list of 10 questions about the LRC/Labour Court initiative which he requires to be clarified. He has refused to outline exactly what these questions are in advance of today's announcement.
While Mr Ogle said he had spent yesterday in consultation with the various parties to the dispute, he confirmed that the executive of ILDA would not be balloting its membership on the proposals as they stand.
According to the ILDA the proposals amount to the same package which provoked the strike, and as such the membership has already voted comprehensively to reject them.
For its part Iarnrod Eireann has said that the ILDA action is an attempt to renegotiate the LRC/Labour Court initiative. Iarnrod Eireann, which has offered to co-operate fully with the suggested LRC/Labour Court investigation into the dispute, pointed to the expectation that "all the drivers will return to duty under the new conditions of employment by the start of business on Monday."
It is understood that the ILDA executive meeting in Co Offaly will continue until about 5 p.m. on Sunday and that a final response to the Labour Court/LRC initiative will then be announced.
