The trade union, Mandate, is to make representations today to a trade delegation visiting the Republic from the Public Accounts Committee of the South African parliament, in support of its campaign to represent a group of workers employed at that country's embassy in Dublin.
Mandate is seeking union recognition on behalf of five of the eight non-diplomatic staff working at the embassy in Earlsfort Terrace before processing a 25 per cent pay claim on their behalf.
Ironically, the union which in the 1980s - as IDATU - did much to discredit the apartheid regime and indirectly help hasten the advent to power of the current African National Congress-led government in South Africa, has sought a meeting, separately, with a trade delegation member, Mr Nigel Bruce MP, from the opposition Democratic Party.
Ms Mary Manning will be part of the union team to meet the South African delegation today.
She is one of the original shop workers in the front line of the two-year battle with Dunnes Stores in the 1980s in support of its members' right not to handle South African goods,
The embassy is refusing to recognise the trade union and is citing the 1961 Vienna Convention in support of its stance which gives immunity to diplomats and embassies from the laws of a host state.