Trade union Impact has warned that the current dispute involving air traffic controllers and the Irish Aviation Authority is likely to escalate to a strike unless a resolution is found.
Impact and the authority's management spent most of yesterday in talks at the Labour Relations Commission in a bid to resolve the row over staffing levels and the amount of overtime that staff are asked to carry out.
Flight services have been disrupted at Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports over recent weeks due to the unavailability of air traffic controllers to provide cover for absent colleagues.
Impact assistant general secretary Michael Landers said yesterday that there was a serious problem of chronic understaffing among air traffic controllers and that this had to be taken seriously by management.
"We need a long-term, sustainable solution and we don't need a continuation of this ad hoc arrangement, whereby services are being run on a wing and a prayer with people doing overtime on a systematic ad hoc basis. That is not good enough," he said.
Asked whether the issue was about more money in overtime pay for air traffic controllers, Mr Landers said it was about staffing levels.
"The problem is there has been no recruitment of air traffic controllers since 2001 and since then traffic levels in Irish airspace have grown by over 50 per cent", he said.
Mr Landers said the union had given notice to the authority that "if the matter is not solved, there will be work stoppages and there will be strike action".
An official work-to-rule and overtime ban is scheduled to start next week. The authority did not comment yesterday.
Meanwhile, the threat of serious disruption at Cork Airport yesterday due to the dispute was lifted by the authority.