There will be no mainline train services today because of a strike by signallers. Informal talks last night failed to avert the action. DART services are not expected to be affected by the strike, apart from Bray to Greystones.
Up to 40,000 passengers, most of them commuters on the outer suburban routes serving Dublin from Drogheda, Maynooth and Kildare, will be affected by the one-day stoppage. Bus Eireann and Dublin Bus yesterday said they had no extra vehicles.
"Every bus available will operate and we will bring in spare drivers if necessary," a spokesman for Dublin Bus, Mr Joe Collins, said. Bus Eireann's spokesman, Mr Cyril McIntyre, said: "We will try and accommodate every extra passenger who turns up, but there is no way we can cope with everyone who normally travels by train."
There is no provision for motorists to use bus lanes today, as has happened in the past during strikes on the DART and Dublin Bus. The DART carries 80,000 people per day and the first of a series of one-day strikes is due to hit that service next Monday.
The SIPTU president, Mr Des Geraghty, and senior CIE management were engaged in last night's peace initiative, and the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, was briefed on developments. However, the short time-scale for talks made enough progress to call off the action almost impossible.
Yesterday the general secretary of the National Bus and Railworkers' Union, Mr Liam Tobin, criticised Iarnrod Eireann for failing to use the four weeks since strike notice was served to enter talks with the unions.
He said that if signallers accepted the new annualised hours package on offer from the company many of his members would lose between £2,274 and £3,400 per year. Some signallers would lose up to £4,500.
He accepted that the company wanted to reduce the working week from seven to five days and that it would cost £1.4 million to meet the unions' claim. "They will need to hire extra people to reduce the working week but they want my members to pay for it through a reduction in earnings. That isn't going to happen," he said.
He pointed out that they were now more poorly paid than linesmen who received a package worth more than 20 per cent following strike action earlier this year.
SIPTU's rail branch secretary, Mr Tony Tobin, said talks on the claim had been going on for more than three years and it would be very difficult to avert the stoppage at this late stage. Both sides had been through procedures and the company had had four weeks' notice to begin talks. Now they were making last-minute appeals for a deferment.
Iarnrod Eireann's human resources manager, Mr John Keenan, said there was a need for the unions to realise that a time came when bargaining had to end. The refusal to accept this was leading to a situation where it was becoming impossible for Iarnrod Eireann to ensure the best return on investment to the travelling public and the taxpayer. It could not afford the claim from the NBRU and SIPTU.
Current weekly basic rates for signallers range between £224.76 and £235.26. Some earn more than £30,000 per year by working up to 84 hours a week, but most earn between £22,000 and £27,000 on the basis of working a seven-day week of around 60 hours. The company is offering an annualised hours agreement with pay rates of £20,900 to £25,000 per year.
There are a number of complicating factors in the dispute, including the Supreme Court appeal for union recognition by the Irish Locomotive Drivers' Association, due to be heard tomorrow, and the first of a series of threatened DART stoppages next Monday.