A one-day strike next week by the State's 200 probation officers will cause chaos in the courts and prisons, their union has warned.
IMPACT says the withdrawal of labour next Tuesday is aimed at forcing the Government to include a staff representative from the Probation and Welfare Service on an expert review group set up recently to examine the service.
The group, which will examine the role and needs of the service, is to report back to the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Mr O'Donoghue, within a few months.
No staff representative is on the review group, although it does include the service's principal probation and welfare officer, Mr Martin Tansey, and a representative of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, to which IMPACT is affiliated.
The majority of probation officers work in criminal courts presenting reports on offenders and taking referrals from judges to draw up such reports. IMPACT says its members handle about 5,500 such reports each year.
Higher criminal courts will not have returned from their Christmas break by next Tuesday, but the vast majority of probation officers' court work is at District Courts, which are sitting.
About 30 probation officers are attached to prisons where they carry out social work duties.
IMPACT said Mr O'Donoghue's refusal of its request to include a staff representative on the group was "manifestly wrong".
A spokesman for its probation and welfare branch, Mr Patrick O'Dea, said probation officers wanted a staff member to be included "on the basis of the staff's track record on input into policy formation and the concept of partnership in the Partnership 2000 programme".
A spokesman for the Department of Justice said the appointments to the review group followed the same procedure as for other such groups in the criminal justice system.