Clerical officers who are in dispute with the Department of Agriculture and Food will extend their industrial action from the five locations in the west where staff are locked out to all the Department's offices next Monday and Tuesday, by Sean MacConnell, Agriculture Correspondent.
A total of 250 members of the Civil Public and Services Union (CPSU) have been picketing offices in Tralee, Limerick, Galway, Castlebar and Clonakilty where they were suspended in the dispute over promotional opportunities in local offices.
A union spokesman said that from Monday next the mandate the union received for industrial action would be extended to the rest of the State. "However, this will be limited industrial action and the public will not see offices closed down for those two days." He said lightning action would take place in all offices across the country in support of the union's demands in the dispute which has been running for over six weeks.
The farm organisations have been applying increasing pressure on the Minister for Agriculture and Food, Mr Walsh, to resolve the issue. The Irish Farmers' Association, which will meet the Minister later today, claims that more than 1,100 herd owners of disease-restricted herds are badly hit by the dispute.
It claimed yesterday that because the generation of official documentation had been hit by the strike, farmers were unable to move animals in or out of their herds. Slaughtering of cattle has not been hit because the Minister changed the regulations covering the issue of movement permits for animals going for slaughter early on in the dispute.
Both the Fine Gael and Labour Party spokespersons on Agriculture, Mr Billy Timmins and Dr Mary Upton, have appealed to the Minister to intervene to protect animal and consumer health. Mr Timmins said he was aware of farmers whose herds had been diagnosed with Bovine TB who were in grave difficulty because of the dispute.
Dr Upton said she feared consumers were being placed at risk because an outbreak of food poisoning would be devastating at this time, when the situation was further compromised by the public health doctors dispute. She said the Minister "should engage in meaningful discussions with the Civil and Public Service Union to resolve this dispute and restore confidence in animal health and food safety procedures".
The Minister said yesterday that the dispute must be settled within the framework of partnership agreements. He said he wanted to see an end to it and that contacts between the CPSU and his Department were on-going.