Some 30 Irish and Polish construction staff are returning to work on the €9 million Eyre Square refurbishment project in Galway this morning after a four-day strike over wage payments.
The 19 Irish and 11 Polish staff employed by Samuel Kingston Construction Ltd, main contractor on the project, agreed to return at 7.30am today after a meeting with the company directors yesterday.
The company has said the difficulties over wage payments were due to a "series of unfortunate events", including a close family bereavement.
Michael Barrett, Connemara, who had been working on the project for the past 10 weeks, said that all the workers had been paid in full yesterday for all wages due. The meeting with the company directors, Sam and Amanda Kingston, had been amicable and all misunderstandings had been resolved.
The mayor of Galway, Catherine Connolly, and a number of local politicians had visited the site yesterday to express their concerns over the situation.
Galway City Council said that responsibility for the main workforce on site was the responsibility of the contractor, but it would insist there was no impact on the timescale for completing the project. The refurbishment was on target for completion in October/November of this year, the spokesman said.
Mr Kingston, managing director of the construction company, said that his wife's father had become seriously ill and had passed away in Wales last weekend. Arrangements to make payments to staff employed in Ireland had been made through Britain, but there had been some errors which had affected payments to four staff, he said.
Mr Kingston confirmed that there had been a previous "glitch" in payments to the Eyre Square staff, but this had been due to use of an online banking system and had since been resolved.
Mr Kingston said he wished to apologise to traders who had been upset at the disruption.
The €9 million Eyre Square project has been the subject of controversy since the contract was awarded by Galway City Council - initially over plans to remove trees but then over disruption to business and traffic and recently over a cost overrun.
One local councillor commented this week that the Eiffel Tower was built at quicker speed than the re-landscaping of Galway's city-centre park.
