Members of the F\u00f3rsa trade union employed at the Oberstown Children Detention Campus in Dublin are to escalate their industrial action in a dispute over resourcing and staffing levels.<\/p>\n
The workers will engage in a 12-hour strike later today and a 48-hour strike from Monday 31 August.<\/p>\n
The industrial action is the fourth in a series of planned weekly work stoppages, which began earlier this month.<\/p>\n
F\u00f3rsa said there will be no derogations for social care work during the action and that the only derogation in place will be for campus catering.<\/p>\n
F\u00f3rsa Assistant General Secretary Deirdre O’Connell said the current industrial action is taking place because members want a lasting solution to ensure the safety of both residents and staff.<\/p>\n
“This industrial action is taking place to highlight the issue of safe staffing at Oberstown,” Ms O’Connell said.<\/p>\n
“These are social care workers working in an environment with a wide variety of needs, with an absolute focus on the safety of the young people in their care,” she added.<\/p>\n
F\u00f3rsa said it advised Oberstown management that it remains available for “meaningful, solution-focused engagement”.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Oberstown said the escalation would create “a direct and unacceptable risk to the safety, security and wellbeing of staff, young people and all those on campus”.<\/p>\n
“Oberstown remains extremely concerned that tomorrow’s planned action, if implemented without derogation, may create circumstances in which the rights and welfare of young people are directly affected,” the statement said.<\/p>\n
“Children should not be used, directly or indirectly, as a means of escalating an industrial dispute,” Oberstown added.<\/p>\n
The centre said that over the past 12 months, it has taken a proactive approach to strengthen staffing, including the recruitment of 23 frontline staff.<\/p>\n
It added that all recorded campus incidents have reduced by approximately 29%, from 191 year-to-date in 2025 to 136 during the same period in 2026.<\/p>\n
“Oberstown is calling on F\u00f3rsa to reconsider this escalation and to ensure that any industrial action is managed in a way that protects the safety, rights and welfare of the young people in Oberstown\u2019s care, as well as the safety and wellbeing of staff,” the centre said.<\/p>\n
Oberstown added that it remains ready to engage constructively with F\u00f3rsa to resolve the dispute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Members of the F\u00f3rsa trade union employed at the Oberstown Children Detention Campus in Dublin are to escalate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":602333,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-603800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/602333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}