IARNRÓD ÉIREANN says it expects much fewer train services to be affected by the drivers' dispute today following the disruption to its network yesterday.
However, it remains unclear whether rail passengers face a period of further train cancellations in the immediate future, especially at weekends, due to what's being described as a current "desperate stalemate" between management and drivers.
The representative drivers' unions have been reluctant to publicly endorse or condemn the drivers' action and one official, the NBRU's Dermot O'Leary, said the employees were "frustrated".
The current dispute centres on issues such as productivity, pay/pensions and flexibility in relation to rest days and overtime.
A total of 540 drivers are employed by Iarnród Éireann.
It was feared that commuters would be caught in the middle of the row over working conditions as 16 train services on commuter and Intercity routes were cancelled yesterday.
Nevertheless, due to the frequency of trains, many people were able to take a train that ran 10 or 15 minutes later and were therefore not significantly discommoded.
Personnel at Connolly Station in Dublin, which bore much of the cancellations yesterday, said it was more or less business as usual and few people had complained about delays.
All train services were expected to operate as normal today at Connolly Station. The Heuston Station service disruptions are limited to the two services which have been hit daily since February 11th; namely the 06.30am from Portlaoise to Heuston and the 5.35pm Heuston to Carlow service.
Iarnród Éireann is hoping all historical workplace issues between all sides can still be addressed by April 28th, a deadline set by the Labour Relations Commission (LRC).
A spokesman said that the company will be forced to take "alternative actions", if drivers did not restore full services, but did not spell out what kind of action was in mind.
The company said the firm and drivers' unions were committed to resolving talks on national work practice issues that first started in 2006, but all of these are not yet fully ironed out.
Drivers are said to be unhappy about the extent of time it has taken for workplace conditions issues to be resolved since 2006. Union sources claimed there was unhappiness that more trains are going in to service but workloads have become greater.
Iarnród Éireann spokesman Barry Kenny said: "A number of services were affected across the Easter weekend as a result of the action by drivers, who, in continuing disruptive actions, are now defying initiatives and instructions from the Labour Relations Commission, the independent facilitator for company-union talks on driver issues, and their own trade unions, SIPTU and NBRU."
He also claimed that some staff were only doing 20 hours driving in a week and some staff are refusing to help train other drivers.
"Iarnród Éireann calls on drivers to immediately guarantee full services as required under company-union agreements and engage in the accelerated talks process which they themselves sought, or the company will be forced to consider all possible options to resolve the impasse," said Mr Kenny.
He also said more train drivers had been recruited to cope with the increased fleet.