Guinness unions and management agreed on a peace formula last night which ended the strike over the closure of Dundalk Packaging only 15 hours after it began.
Closure of the plant was suspended at Labour Relations Commission conciliation talks pending the outcome of negotiations after Easter.
Both sides agreed to further talks under the auspices of the LRC, starting next Thursday. The date for final closure of the Dundalk plant will be decided at these negotiations.
Had the strike continued, Guinness might have been forced to pour tens of thousands of pints of stout down the drain, Mr Sean Mackell, the general secretary of the Guinness Staff Union, said last night.
Mr Mackell explained that while the strike lasted the dumping of products would have been inevitable due to the cessation of deliveries and the pressure on storage space. Normally, there are two deliveries each week to licensed premises in the Dublin area and one delivery per week to customers outside the capital.
He confirmed that St James's Gate was producing one brew per day, equivalent to "thousands" of pints. "The sooner we're pouring pints down our throats, and not down the drain, the better," he said.
Mr Pat Barry, the company's director of corporate affairs, speaking earlier yesterday, did not believe that dumping Guinness down the drain would arise "in the foreseeable future". He explained: "We have cranked down production and a lot of product has been taken out of the system."
There was plenty of capacity in the large storage tankers, Mr Barry said. "We would probably have to use road tankers to dispose of the stock."
Dublin Corporation's drainage department confirmed that Guinness has a trade effluent licence, issued by the Environmental Protection Agency, which permits the company to pour trade and domestic effluent down the drain. "Guinness is the largest discharger of trade effluent in Dublin", a spokesman said. The discharges go to the Dublin city municipal treatment works at Ringsend.
It was unlikely, however, that the company would be entitled to dump large volumes of beer, because the EPA licence would require it to meet certain conditions and the situation would have to be closely monitored.