Doctors charged with managing the control of infectious diseases are to go on strike in a dispute over pay and other issues.
The threatened action was described yesterday by the Health Service Employers' Agency (HSEA) as "wholly unjustified and unwarranted".
The strike, by the State's 270 public health doctors, is to be delayed for two weeks because of the war in Iraq.
But the group of doctors, who are members of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO), will continue their current work-to-rule policy.
They have withdrawn from national committees and are refusing to provide cover for colleagues. They have also been refusing to participate in planning to deal with bio-terrorist threats.
Dr Joe Barry, chairman of the IMO's public health committee, said the decision to go on strike had not been taken lightly.
The doctors are seeking implementation of a report published last April which recommended that they be on call round the clock to deal with threats to public health.
The report, drawn up by former Department of Education secretary-general, Mr Declan Brennan, also recommended that public-health doctors get pay equivalent to hospital consultants.
Dr Barry said the failure to implement the report's recommendations was "a blatant abuse of the good will shown by these doctors for so long."
However, Mr John Delamere, industrial relations executive of the HSEA, said doctors had made "a lot of play about a delay in the process, but they are partners in and co-owners of that process".
The pay issue remained within the industrial relations process, he said, and the HSEA was willing to return to the Labour Relations Commission to discuss it at any time.
A spokeswoman for the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, said he was calling on the IMO to have the outstanding issues dealt with in the Labour Court.
The main work of public health doctors includes health promotion and the surveillance and control of infectious diseases such as meningitis, winter vomiting bug and food poisoning.