The Garda Commissioner, Mr Pat Byrne, said yesterday that he was prepared to allow "a little more time to elapse before even considering the question of discipline."
Referring to the refusal by gardai to operate the new £50 million PULSE computer system, the Commissioner said at a press conference in Limerick that he did not wish to escalate the dispute and was confident it would be resolved. It was an industrial relations dispute and disciplinary regulations were not there to resolve industrial disputes, he said.
He was not "shying away from taking action, but we have to be reasonable and look at the whole situation."
He spoke of his continuing frustration and that of the Garda organisation as a whole. It was an issue that had to be negotiated and sorted out very soon, and was doing tremendous damage to the force, he said. Everyone would recognise that. He said he hoped reason would prevail.
The general secretary of the Garda Representative Association (GRA), Mr P.J. Stone, said the dispute was not solely about PULSE.
"The background to the dispute is a deep and ongoing sense of frustration among gardai at the way they've been treated by the Government," he said.
PULSE was not just a simple matter of changing from one computer system to another but was rather a large and complex development project which would bring about major productivity benefits and result in considerable savings for the Exchequer.
Mr Stone said the Government had pressed ahead, despite the absence of the overall agreement, and sought to impose PULSE "willy-nilly".
Gardai still wanted to resolve this dispute and to see PULSE up and running as soon as possible.
The fact that gardai had no direct way of ensuring that account was taken of their interests in the negotiations on a successor to Partnership 2000 was also a concern, Mr Stone added.
"We have proposed that a Garda Consultative Committee be established that could nip potential disputes in the bud," he said.