Irish Ferries has strongly denied suggestions that security personnel currently policing its vessels are carrying tear-gas or other "weaponry".
A spokesman for the company said it was using the security workers to ensure access was kept open to "authorised personnel", and to protect the assets of Irish Ferries.
Asked whether security personnel might forcibly remove the ship's officers from the Isle of Inishmore, or other vessels, the spokesman replied: "I can't see that taking place."
He was commenting yesterday following a newspaper report that the company had considered using tear-gas in a prior dispute with employees.
Gerald Flynn, the Irish Independent's industrial correspondent, said he stood over the report, claiming it had been confirmed to him by Alf McGrath, head of human resources at Irish Ferries.
However, in a heated exchange on RTÉ Radio's Saturday View, Mr McGrath strongly rejected Mr Flynn's account of events.
In a follow-up statement, Irish Ferries said the suggestion that it would ever give any consideration to using tear-gas in an industrial dispute "is one which the company abhors and is contrary to every standard of good and acceptable behaviour to which the company subscribes.
"Irish Ferries also denies in the strongest possible terms the suggestion, published in some media, that security personnel on board carry or were equipped with any form of weaponry."
"This may well be the case," Mr Flynn wrote in yesterday's Sunday Independent in reply to the company's statement, "but what Mr McGrath had said was that it had been raised as an option during last year's dispute when crew took control of one of its ships."
