The Labour Court has intervened in the dispute between Aer Lingus management and cabin crew which threatens to disrupt the travel plans of around 70,000 people next week.
It has invited management and the trade union Impact, which represents cabin crew, to a hearing on Wednesday.
A spokesman for Aer Lingus said it would attend the Labour Court. Cabin crew have also accepted the invitation.
They are planning to go on strike on Monday 16th and Wednesday 19th June as part of the dispute over rosters. At present these planned work stoppages are still scheduled to go ahead.
Aer Lingus has said that around 35,000 people could be affected on each day of the strike.
The Government had earlier urged both sides in the dispute to attend the Labour Relations Commission to try to broker a compromise.
Minister for Transport Mr Varadkar called for an end to “megaphone diplomacy” saying the Government body was available to both sides to help resolve the dispute over rosters.
“If the union and the company can’t resolve the situation by bilateral talks they should now go to Labour Relations Commission, and the Government is inviting them to to to the Labour Relations Commission, which is a Government body, and they will try and broker a compromise.”
Mr Varadkar said he was concerned about the prospect of further strikes at Aer Lingus, which would cause “huge inconvenience” to tourists and Irish people trying to get away for holidays.
“Essentially what this is is a dispute about rosters. And absolutely everyone knows that sooner or later it’s going to be sorted out by negotiations,” he said.
“What’s happening at the moment is megaphone diplomacy with threats of strikes from one side and threats of redundancies from the other, and that isn’t serving anyone’s purpose.”
Mr Varadkar was speaking at Government Buildings this morning.
At the weekend Impact said it was serving management with notice of two further one-day strikes - for next Monday, June 16th and Wednesday, June 18th. These are to follow a strike held late last month which disrupted the travel plans of nearly 30,000 people and cost the airline up to €10 million.
