Third-party independent "external mediation" to resolve the rail dispute would not be considered by Iarnrod Eireann, a spokesman for the company said yesterday.
Reacting to a call from the president of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, Ms Inez McCormack, for a third party to negotiate a settlement, he said the company had "had no contact from Congress" and that no form of mediation had been offered.
Mr Brendan Ogle, executive secretary of the Irish Locomotive Drivers' Association, reacted positively to the suggestion.
Ms McCormack, speaking on RTE Radio 1's Today with Rodney Rice show yesterday, said the "industrial relations mess that this [the ILDA strike] is causing doesn't do us any good as unions".
"It doesn't do workers any good, it doesn't do employers any good and it certainly isn't doing the public any good," she said.
"I think it requires sitting down, sorting it and working it out and everybody recognising that exercising power just for the sake of it doesn't actually solve the problem."
"I think we need some form of external mediator to come in and try and sort this out."
Welcoming her view, Mr Ogle said his members would "be available to Ms McCormack to advance this very helpful proposition".
However, rejecting any suggestion that a third party might intervene, a spokesman for Iranrod Eireann said striking rail-workers should return to work and have their grievances addressed individually through established procedures.
He called the association's disruption yesterday "a last desperate attempt to bully their way to union recognition".
Clarifying her position some time after the radio interview, Ms McCormack said she was not offering mediation, but calling for it.
"I would strongly support mediation to help them return to work with dignity. But not as a negotiating tool to reopen the debate on recognition and the terms of the agreement," she said.
