The National Bus and Rail Union made the announcement today.

Travel chaos across the country could be looming following the announcement that the National Bus And Rail Union (NRBU) plans to ballot drivers on the prospect of an all-out strike. According to the Irish Independent, the dispute is over driver training. The company is being accused of forcing drivers to train other drivers – an act which is not listed in their contracts. In a statement, the NBRU referred to what it calls Iarnród Éireann's 'unprecedented attack' on longstanding industrial relations procedures by forcing changes to terms and conditions (within the training regime), without agreement. https://twitter.com/ZaraKing/status/960536979103416320 Iarnród Éireann sent out a news release today stating the following:

"Due to a withdrawal of trade union cooperation with driver mentoring over the past 21 months, Iarnród Éireann has had to repeatedly defer the introduction of an increased 10-minute DART frequency, and expansion of other Commuter services, while passenger numbers have increased to record levels of 45.5 million in 2017.

In addition, this has seen the career progression of over 30 trainee drivers – employees and trade union members - stalled, as trade union non-cooperation prevented them from completing training, training which existing drivers have benefited from in the past.

We have engaged repeatedly and extensively with our trade unions to resolve this over the past two years, under the auspices of the Workplace Relations Commission and Labour Court, resulting in a Labour Court recommendation last July addressing driver mentoring and past productivity.  The trade unions requested a further engagement to develop a framework with the assistance of Kevin Duffy, former Chairman of the Labour Court, which was agreed to by Iarnród Éireann.

However, this recommendation and framework was rejected, and we now see the pressures on driver resources becoming intolerable in the face of growing demand.

We therefore wrote to our driver trade unions – NBRU and SIPTU on 12 January advising them that all elements of the Labour Court recommendation would be implemented.  This has seen:

-          Drivers have received an immediate and further 1.15% pay increase, on top of the 7.5% increase to all employees over three years agreed in December

-          An increase of almost 35% in the allowance for driver mentoring

-          We have advertised internally for drivers to express an interest in participating in mentoring to enable training to resume, and urgently needed service expansion to be delivered

Driver training must be allowed to resume, and industrial action would damage the interests of commuters and drivers alike.   We would welcome the opportunity for urgent engagement with trade unions through the industrial relations machinery of the state to resumed training is delivered at the earliest opportunity, for the good of our customers,  and trainee driver colleagues."

Any potential strike would affect commuter and DART services. General Secretary of the NBRU Dermot O'Leary said: "The fact is that the agreed training regime at the Company is currently one of a voluntarist nature, and is solely at the discretion of the individual driver. "The decision to break this agreement by forcing actual changes to terms and conditions onto workers is both unprecedented and contrary to how disputed matters should be addressed within our dispute procedures."