AT A cost of hundreds of thousands of euro to the State, the Irish Hotels Federation and the Labour Court settled their High Court dispute over wage rates for hotel workers on a technicality yesterday — and agreed to revert to an agreement hammered out several weeks before the court even sat.

The Irish Hotels Federation (IHF) has been successful in its High Court challenge to have an Employer Regulation Order quashed.

THE outcome of a High Court challenge to the constitutionality of laws under which a statutory minimum wage and working conditions were fixed for 25,000 hotel workers outside Dublin and Cork will have significant implications for 250,000 workers whose wages and conditions are fixed under the same laws.