Irish Ferries dispute deepens

Irish Ferries has said the MV Normandy is still due to dock at Rosslare this afternoon despite a vow by port workers that they would not handle the ship when it arrived.

The vessel, which is carrying 113 passengers and dozens of freight lorries, left Cherbourg last night and is set to reach the Irish port at around 4.30pm.

A spokesman for the ferry company, which is involved in a dispute with employees over attempts to replace 550 seafarers with cheaper Eastern European labour, said the ship was still on course for Rosslare.

He said that although Iarnrod Eireann, which runs the ports, had said they would be unable to let the ship berth for health and safety reasons, Irish Ferries was demanding they deliver on their contractual obligations.

There had earlier been suggestions from union SIPTU that the firm might try to divert the vessel to Cork after workers at both Rosslare and Dublin said they would refuse to let it dock in solidarity with Irish Ferries workers.

The dispute between staff and management escalated on Thursday when officers barricaded themselves into the control room on the Isle of Inishmore which is stranded in Pembroke, Wales.

Crews of the Jonathan Swift in Dublin and the Ulysses in Holyhead have also prevented their ships from sailing.

As the crisis deepened today, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern labelled the company’s actions – which has seen them bring foreign workers on to the three ships accompanied by security personnel – as ham-fisted.

Despite assurances from SIPTU they would still participate in upcoming social partnership talks, the Taoiseach warned the situation would affect the partnership process.

Mr Ahern said: “The whole dispute has had implications for the partnership process as it’s totally outside the way we do business.

“I find it unbelievable that people would do this.

“I can understand why companies want to restructure, I can understand change management, I can understand all of those things, and there’s been case studies for decades on how you do these things.

“But if you were to go out try and invent in the year 2005 a ham-fisted way of upsetting about everybody, this is a really good case study.”

The Taoiseach said the Labour Relations Commission could intervene if the company’s management requested such a move.

Speaking from the MV Normandy en route to Ireland, passenger Mark Penny, from Dublin, said he still believed they would be going to Rosslare.

“There was one announcement this morning, for the first time the captain said that we might have heard there were problems in Dublin and problems in Rosslare and that as we speak the solicitors for Irish Ferries were trying to sort it out.

“As far as I’ve ever been concerned, from an Irish Ferries point of view, we’ve always been heading to Rosslare. I’ve never been told any different,” he said.

Mr Penny said some passengers onboard felt they were being used as leverage in the dispute.

But he said: “You have to balance up what you’re hearing from Dublin and what Irish Ferries are saying here.

“I guess it’s a bit of a mushroom mentality – we’re being kind of kept in the dark,” he told RTÉ Radio.