Members of the Irish Locomotive Drivers' Association (ILDA) are returning to work, Iarnrod Eireann has claimed ahead of a crucial meeting of the breakaway workers' group today.
As the rail dispute enters its seventh week, the company has reported that the number of drivers taking part in the unofficial action has fallen to 98.
Mr John Keenan, Iarnrod Eireann's human resources manager, said this implied that up to 30 members of the ILDA had gone back to work. "There has been a noticeable drift back and we detect a very strong desire among those still out there to end the strike.
"There is also a growing realisation that the recognition issue cannot be won."
But Mr Brendan Ogle, executive secretary of the ILDA, contested the figures, saying 120 drivers were still "in dispute". He added "there is no sense of our members' resolve weakening. Our members are tired of the way they are being treated but they are more determined than ever to see this through."
The ILDA is to examine its options today at a general meeting in Dublin. Last Friday, it wrote to the company threatening legal action if Iarnrod Eireann continued to refuse to enter into negotiations over pay and conditions. The group claimed that following a change in its constitution, whereby membership was limited to Iarnrod Eireann drivers, it qualified as an excepted body under the 1941 Trade Union Act, giving it rights of negotiation.
However, Mr Keenan said the company had received legal advice to the contrary. He said to become an excepted body, the ILDA would have to be the only representative body in the sector, which was not the case.
Nor, as the High Court found earlier this year, did ILDA qualify as a trade union as, among other things, it did not have 1,000 members.
With no immediate end to the dispute in sight, disruption to commuters is set to continue. Among the routes due to be affected today are Drogheda, Dundalk, Cork and Kildare. Full services, however, will operate on the Galway, Belfast, Rosslare and Sligo routes.
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