It was a long day spent waiting for the inevitable in Tullamore, Co Offaly, yesterday as the executive council of the Irish Locomotive Drivers' Association met to consider settlement prospects which it had already described as "bleak".
Arriving 20 minutes early for the 11 a.m. meeting, Mr Brian Dunphy, an ILDA executive council member based at Portarlington, was downbeat about the possibility of a breakthrough. He confirmed that contact had been made with Mr Kieran Mulvey, chairman of the Labour Relations Commission (LRC), but he added that the drivers "can't work an unsafe agreement" and so could not accept that they should return to work this morning as expected by the Labour Court-LRC initiative.
Shortly afterwards, another delegate, Mr Chris Holbrook, who came from Cork, arrived saying he had been "directed to reject the initiative".
Hopes of a swift decision from the executive receded when the man everyone wanted to talk to, the ILDA executive secretary, Mr Brendan Ogle, telephoned to say he was stuck in traffic in Moate, Co Westmeath.
In the meantime, the waiting members of the executive revealed that a response had been received from the LRC-Labour Court late on Saturday night, but the details of any possible last-minute offer from Iarnrod Eireann or an amended initiative from the LRC remained with Mr Ogle.
By 11.35 a.m. Mr Ogle had managed to make his way through the traffic and indicated that the only news was that there was, basically, no news.
A blizzard of faxes between all parties to the dispute had resulted in nothing more than the ILDA outlining what it called a new position which reiterated the union's opposition to returning to "work an unsafe agreement".
With no other party to the dispute attending the Tullamore meeting, and so little sign of a breakthrough, the executive council went into its meeting.
By lunchtime Mr Ogle was again commending his new position document to the waiting media, explaining that it differed significantly from the association's original position. He wished, he said, that the media would focus on the very real safety issues associated with working the new agreement.
These were fully explained in the paper, and further details of the association's response to the Labour Court-LRC initiative would be available later at a press conference.
At the conference, Mr Ogle explained that the new position paper did not contain all the members' difficulties. For example, he said, it made no mention of a maximum number of Sundays to be worked, or of "black Sundays" days - usually about four per worker, which could be taken off for "family reasons". There was no mention of payments for unsociable hours, he added.
Mr Ogle said he must criticise the media in that after eight weeks they had failed to get across the message that there were serious safety concerns about working the new Iarnrod Eireann agreement.
Acknowledging that he would not recommend a return to work in line with the Labour Court-LRC initiative, Mr Ogle insisted he was not rejecting the initiative. It would be put to the members this afternoon, he said.
"But we will not work an unsafe agreement," he concluded, ending the day very much as it had started.