The wife of the Irish Locomotive Drivers Association (ILDA) leader has said she would "sooner starve" than have her husband return to work without a resolution to the rail dispute.
Ms Pauline Ogle quoted her husband, Mr Brendan Ogle, the executive secretary of the ILDA, as saying the strike would not go on indefinitely.
She was speaking on the Gerry Ryan Show on 2FM yesterday morning.
"I think somebody has to budge at some stage. These lads are so determined.
"If it takes another six months out of work they're managing. I would sooner starve than have him go back to work," she said.
However, she said ILDA members would not return to work under present conditions, despite losing eight weeks' wages.
"The lads are very determined they don't want to go back to work until CIE will sit down and talk to them and they say they'd go back to work in the morning if they could work their old rosters," she said.
"CIE are saying that they will deal with these guys if they return back to work and they go through the official grievance procedures. But for months and months before this strike actually came about the guys had been doing that and it was falling on deaf ears.
"Nobody was listening to them," she said.
Ms Ogle said the drivers were concerned with some of the terms of Iarnrod Eireann's New Deal For Locomotive Drivers which came into effect in May.
"One was the introduction of part-time train drivers," she said.
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