Informal talks are to begin today between the Government and the Garda Representative Association (GRA) in an attempt to break the impasse over pay negotiations.
GRA negotiators are to meet officials of the Department of Justice to hear new proposals arising from the initiative of the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, to reopen formal talks following his statement yesterday that there was room to negotiate a "fairly substantial increase" for gardai so long as this remained within the public pay sector parameters.
There was some confusion among gardai yesterday about how much more the Government was prepared to concede without breaching public sector pay guidelines.
The GRA team will put the Government's proposals to a meeting of its 26-member central executive committee (CEC) to morrow and the committee will decide whether to continue with its industrial action or re-enter talks.
The hard line taken by CEC members appeared to have softened somewhat yesterday, but there was still suspicion among some committee members that the Government was seeking to restart talks only in order to delay further "blue flu" strikes.
If the GRA negotiators do not respond favourably to the Taoiseach's initiative there could be another one-day work stoppage by gardai, possibly later this week.
In what appeared to be a setback yesterday, the staff association representing the 2,500 sergeants and inspectors, which had remained inside the formal pay negotiating structure, announced that it was suspending its involvement in formal talks until the Government clarified the IBEC/ICTU initiative.
The Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI) said the Taoiseach's initiative had created a new situation. It intended to "explore fully the implications before continuing in the present talks". The general secretary of the AGSI, Mr George Maybury, said that his membership was extremely frustrated at the lack of progress in the talks to date.
However, senior Garda sources welcomed Mr Ahern's initiative and took it to mean that the Government was prepared to discuss past productivity payments with the Garda staff associations.
A statement issued on behalf of the Government, ICTU and IBEC said that the two organisations were prepared to facilitate Garda involvement in the pubic pay sector talks. Up to now, the Garda and Defence Forces staff associations have been excluded from direct involvement in public sector pay talks.
The joint statement continued: "The social partners also share the Government's belief that significant progress can be made on the immediate pay question within public pay policy, through addressing a range of issues, including productivity, which have not been addressed to date."
According to senior Garda sources yesterday, the inclusion of the phrase "which have not been addressed to date" is an indication that the Government is prepared to give in to the GRA demand that its members be paid for past productivity arrangements. The GRA is demanding a 15 per cent pay increase in respect of this "past productivity" claim.
Until now, Mr Ahern and the Government had been adamant that there would be no discussion of past productivity and that the maximum offer - before discussions on future productivity arrangements - would be capped at 7 per cent.
No formal response from the GRA is expected until at least later today, after the GRA delegation meets officials at the Department of Justice.
Speaking on RTE radio yesterday morning, Mr Ahern said: "We've made it clear that we will move off 5.5 per cent as long as we're discussing issues such as productivity and that we cannot go to 15 per cent for the simple reason that the PCW agreement is completed for 18 months.
"For us to go up to a figure like 15 per cent would mean that every public servant in the country would come back in with a substantial increase. Now, we're not doing that. We're not doing it this week, next week or any other week.
"But there is room to negotiate, I think, with productivity and other measures, to give a fairly substantial increase to gardai, which we acknowledge they should have. But we cannot go outside the parameters set down for the past few years."