Striking lift engineers at Ballymun are to resume normal working on the estate this morning. The agreement to resume work may herald a breakthrough in the 12-week national lift strike.
Meanwhile, the Minister of State for Labour Affairs, Mr Tom Kitt, has announced that he hopes to appoint an independent arbitrator soon to investigate the issues and seek a settlement.
These initiatives came as Dublin Corporation told the High Court yesterday that it had found a Northern Ireland-based company which would provide a limited repair service to the flats complex. Ballymun tenants had been seeking an order to commit the Lord Mayor of Dublin and the city's councillors to prison for failing to carry out a Supreme Court order to maintain lifts in the estate which has 6,000 tenants.
There were fears that the introduction of an outside company could lead to an escalation of the dispute. However, a senior official of the Technical Engineering and Electrical Union, Mr Dan Miller, said yesterday that his members had agreed unanimously on Wednesday to resume normal working in Ballymun. Negotiations on the return to work were finalised yesterday evening.
"My people will be going in the morning," he said last night. "Hopefully, this gesture will assist the Minister in his initiative to resolve this dispute."
A spokeswoman for the employers also welcomed the return to normal working in Ballymun. She said this was what the Irish Business and Employers Confederation had been seeking from the start.
Mr Kitt, in a statement from Hong Kong, where he is part of a Government trade mission to China, said he had written to IBEC and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions seeking their agreement to independent, third-party arbitration.
Both are expected to respond positively, although an arbitrator has yet to be agreed.