Train drivers on mainline and DART services started their national 24-hour stoppage at midnight, despite intense behind-the-scenes moves and appeals to the workers to call off their unofficial action.
The stoppage by 300 drivers is expected to result in traffic chaos in Dublin and considerable inconvenience in towns throughout the country on mainline routes.
The Minister for Public Enterprise, Mrs O'Rourke, had separate talks with senior members of union and management yesterday. The chairman of CIE, Mr Brian Joyce, appealed to the drivers to call off their action but the drivers said the stoppage would go ahead.
The action is expected to have the worst effect in Dublin. It will create massive traffic congestion in the city and delay thousands of commuters. It will also have a severe impact on many towns on mainline routes. Bus Eireann says it will operate its full range of services, but warned that it was not in a position to cater for the substantial increase in passengers.
Mr Joyce said: "There is absolutely no need for this type of maverick action in view of the fact that Iarnrod Eireann has already accepted the framework for future talks as proposed by the Labour Relations Commission on Sunday and which the trade unions themselves are to consider on Thursday. Unofficial action of this kind is something that needs to be relegated to the past."
A spokesman for the drivers told The Irish Times they regretted the inconvenience to the public but they had no option but to make their protest because of the foot-dragging tactics of the company and Mr Joyce's recent antiunion remarks. He said Iarnrod Eireann had not been taking the negotiations seriously.
The director of the Small Firms Association, Mr Pat Delaney, estimated that the dispute would cost small firms more than £1 million because of the number of people who would stay away. He said: "The bully-boy tactics of the past do not have a place in a modern industrialised society. The motives of the drivers are cynical."
A meeting of the National Locomotive Drivers Association (NLDA), which claims to represent 120 drivers, took place last night. The chairman, Mr Brendan Ogle, afterwards criticised the two main unions - SIPTU and NRBU - and said this was a futile and self-defeating stoppage which was creating "disgraceful and unnecessary difficulties for the travelling public". He hoped as many of his members as possible would turn up for work.