The Labour Relations Commission (LRC) has convened talks for tomorrow to attempt to resolve the electrical contracting dispute.
The talks will begin at 2.30pm and will be be chaired by Kieran Mulvey, chief executive of the LRC.
Earlier this evening, the main industrial relations trouble-shooting body under social partnership, the National Implementation Body (NIB), intervened over the threatened strike by electricians next week.
The Technical Engineering and Electrical Union (TEEU) is scheduled to place pickets at more than 200 construction sites and at a number of manufacturing companies around the country over a pay claim which would see the hourly rate for electricians rise by more than 11 per cent from €21.49 to €23.98.
However, the NIB called on parties in the dispute to immediately re-engage with the Labour Relations Commission "to explore the full range of issues at the centre of the dispute with a view to averting the threatened action".
New talks aimed at averting a threatened strike by 10,500 electricians from next week are expected to take place over the weekend.
The TEEU, which represents the electricians, said this evening it would attend any talks to resolve the dispute over pay with electrical contractors. However it said that the strike notice for Monday remained in place .
TEEU general secretary -designate Eamon Devoy said that his members were looking for money due to them since 2006/2007.
The Electrical Contractors Association, the body which represents some of the larger contractors, has said that its members were not in a position to pay the increases sought by the electricians.
If the strike goes ahead work on high profile construction projects such as the new second terminal at Dublin Airport, the new Intel development in Co Kildare and the Corrib Gas Project as well as the new Lansdowne road stadium could be hit.
The Dublin Airport Authority told staff in an internal bulletin yesterday that the union had informed it that it had no dispute with it.
The Minister of State for Labour Affairs, Dara Calleary, has said that the parties should use the State's industrial relations machinery to resolve the dispute as soon as possible.
Earlier today, the director general of the Construction Industry Federation Tom Parlon urged the union to call off the strike and to call off the strike "and to engage with us with the genuine objective of finding a solution".
The Electrical Contractors' Association is a part of the Construction Industry Federation.
"TEEU seems to be making a virtue about the scale of the impact that this strike will have not just on construction but on the wider economy, including through the most regrettable targeting of our multi-national investment sector. This is at a time when the IMF has found that Ireland is losing foreign direct investment at a pace unprecedented in any other economy. The impact that the threat of strike action has on our international reputation is unquantifiable", Mr Parlon said.
However, TEEU General Secretary Designate Eamon Devoy said that it had tried on four occasions to negotiate with employers on the basis of terms of reference proposed by the Labour Court.
"Our members have shown extreme patience in waiting for a pay increase agreed by the main employer bodies in April 2008 and have not received a single penny, although clients of those same companies were being billed on the basis of that increase being applied", he said.
