Irish Rail says no to talks with ILDA despite differing view of Department

Iarnrod Eireann has re stated its position that the Irish Locomotive Drivers Association has no entitlement to negotiate with it, despite apparently contrary opinions expressed by officials of the Department of Public Enterprise.

As the rail strike enters its sixth week with no sign of resolution, the ILDA claimed yesterday that department documents released to it under the Freedom of Information Act showed Iarnrod Eireann was "clearly erroneous" in refusing to negotiate.

However, the company ruled out a change of policy towards the association and played down reported comments of department officials arguing that a change in the ILDA's constitution meant it now had a case for negotiating rights.

Meanwhile, there was confusion last night about whether ILDA representatives would be invited to a meeting tomorrow of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Public Enterprise and Transport. An Iarnrod Eireann spokesman said the company had been invited to the meeting, and that SIPTU and the National Bus and Railworkers' Union - but not the ILDA - had also been invited.

However, the executive secretary of the ILDA, Mr Brendan Ogle, said last night he had been told by committee chairman Mr Sean Doherty that none of the parties to the dispute had yet been invited, and that when invitations were issued, the ILDA would be included.

Mr Ogle said the comments of department officials, quoted in yesterday's Sunday Business Post, "concur completely with our legal advice" and showed the rail company was becoming "increasingly isolated".

In the light of ILDA's decision to amend its constitution to limit membership to train drivers in the Republic, two senior officials in the industrial relations section appeared to argue that ILDA had a case for treatment as an "excepted body": an association without a negotiating licence under industrial relations legislation, but with entitlement to represent members on wages and conditions.

This view was rejected yesterday by the company's human resources manager, Mr John Kee nan. He said the change to ILDA's constitution had removed one obstacle to excepted body status, but the association could not be given representative rights when alternatives - in this case SIPTU and the NBRU - were available.

Regardless of ILDA's argument for excepted body status, he added, it remained the gift of the company to decide whether they should be allowed to negotiate with it. The implications of granting negotiating rights to the association were "huge", he said. However, the company's legal advice was that the ILDA did not in any event have a case.

As the dispute continues, Mr Ogle said his members were surviving on support from their families and other transport workers, from welfare payments in some cases, and from public support. Collections on behalf of the strikers had raised "several thousands of pounds".

Iarnrod Eireann would not succeed in "starving our members into submission, Mr Ogle added, arguing that the company was under the greater pressure. "Our members are under financial strain, yes, but they're not losing £4-£5 million a day."