Prison officers are to decide this week whether to intensify their overtime dispute with Minister for Justice Michael McDowell or ballot on the deal on offer.
A threat of industrial action in prisons remains after the executive of the Prison Officers' Association decided yesterday to refer the issue to a special delegate conference on Friday.
Delegates will decide whether to put the current pay offer to a ballot or reject it outright, in which case industrial action would be likely to follow.
Mr McDowell had given the POA until this week to ballot members, warning that otherwise he would move "immediately" to privatise the prison escort service.
He said yesterday he would defer publication of the privatisation tender documents for 28 days, if the conference decided on Friday to put the pay offer to a ballot with a recommendation of acceptance. Once the tendering process began, however, it would not be cancelled, he said.
Mr McDowell's attempts to reform prison overtime have been the subject of a dispute between him and the POA for the past two years.
POA members have already rejected the terms of a compromise put forward by the Civil Service Arbitration Board. That would have seen the State's 3,200 prison officers earn a salary of between €48,000 and €70,000 each, in return for working an average of seven hours' overtime a week. They would also have received a once-off payment of €13,750.
The Government believed that, under this offer, the prisons' overtime bill, which has exceeded €60 million, would have been reduced by €25 million.
However, the warders rejected it by two-to-one. Many did not want to work overtime and believed they would be forced to do so under the deal.
An alternative plan agreed at the POA's annual conference in May was subsequently rejected by the Irish Prison Service, but Mr McDowell agreed to "tweak" the arbitration board's formula at a meeting with the association earlier this month.
There is no indication if a resolution has become more or less likely.
POA general secretary John Clinton said the next move would be entirely up to delegates at Friday's conference. The POA executive would not be making any recommendation, he said.
In Cork yesterday, Mr McDowell said his offer to defer privatisation of the prison escort service to allow time for a ballot was not a "recipe for delay".
He added: "I have made it very clear that if I put this matter out for tender and serious commercial companies tender for the outsourced escort service - I am not going to cheat those people and collapse the tendering process once it's started.
"I am going to go ahead with it. I'm not going to end up compensating companies for cancelling the tendering process when they've expended a lot of money to try and secure the contract."