The ESB group of unions and the Government last night appeared to be on a collision course over planned reform of the State-owned electricity supplier.
This has led to the possibility of a nationwide electricity blackout as a result of industrial action by ESB workers in the run-up to the forthcoming general election.
Last week, the Government outlined in a White Paper on Energy its intention to move the ESB's transmission assets - the national grid - to a separate company, EirGrid.
The national transmission network is operated independently by EirGrid, but is owned by the ESB, in which the trustees of the Employee Share Ownership Plan have a 5 per cent stake.
However, in an escalation of the dispute, Brendan Ogle, of the ATGWU union, has accused the Government of "welching" on a previous commitment not to break up the ESB. He suggested that it would be "tactically naive" for the unions to wait until after the election to instigate any industrial action.
The Government had misjudged the strength of opposition within the unions to the break-up, Mr Ogle said yesterday, adding that the Government's apparent belief that a financial settlement could be reached with staff shareholders in the ESB to enable the move was simply wrong.
"It's far more fundamental than that . . . We want to protect this company in the public interest," he told The Irish Times.
"I think there is a real problem here. There seems to be a perception that we are going to let this issue rest until after the general election. I feel that would be tactically naive."
In this context, an electricity blackout in advance of the general election - leaving thousands of homes and businesses around the country without power - was a "real possibility". Mr Ogle, who was responding to a report in yesterday's Sunday Tribune newspaper, added that he expected to meet the Government this week.
A spokeswoman for the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Noel Dempsey, who is in the US for St Patrick's Day celebrations, yesterday said she could see no reason why he would be opposed to meeting the ESB unions. But she stressed that a Government decision had been taken in relation to the White Paper, meaning that any negotiations would concern the implementation of this decision. There was, she said, "no question" of the Government revisiting the decision.
Davy Naughton, of the TEEU union, said that there was "no business case whatsoever for doing what they're doing". He added: "The bottom line is we're opposed to the fragmenting of the company . . . Whatever we've got to do to stop the transfer . . . that's what we've got to do."