Talks at the Labour Court last night failed to avert a planned strike action by residential carers.
The strike will begin this morning and will affect hundreds of families who will now have to remove their relatives from residential homes.
The IMPACT trade union, numbering 1,200 members, failed to reach agreement with health service employers at Labour Court talks last night.
SIPTU, however, has deferred its planned action until a full Labour Court hearing is held later this week.
The dispute is over pay increases of up to 44 per cent awarded to childcare workers that were not extended to residential carers.
But the Health Service Employers' Agency said the processing the claim on behalf of residential carers was being dealt with separately under the benchmarking process.
