{"id":656848,"date":"2026-10-16T19:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T19:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/656848\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T19:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T19:34:10","slug":"wednesdays-public-sector-strike-called-off-as-unions-and-government-agree-to-enter-talks-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/656848\/","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday\u2019s public sector strike called off as unions and Government agree to enter talks \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The Government has announced it will enter a \u201cfocused and intensive exercise\u201d with unions in a bid to agreeing a basis for formal negotiations on a new public sector wage deal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">In parallel, the unions have agreed to suspend the second public sector strike scheduled for next Wednesday<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The talks, to set the ground for more detailed discussions, are likely to begin immediately.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">They will be conducted between Owen Reidy, the general secretary of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions; Oonagh Buckley, the secretary general of the Department of the Environment; and Kevin Foley, the chairperson of the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) and former chair of the Labour Court.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Trade union umbrella group Ictu agreed to suspend next week\u2019s strike after a meeting of its public services committee on Friday afternoon. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The agreement was brokered after a series of back-channel communications between Government and unions in recent days. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">In a statement, the Government said: \u201cFollowing discussions between representatives of the Government and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, today Mr Kevin Foley, Ms Oonagh Buckley and Mr Owen Reidy have been appointed to undertake a focused and intensive exercise with the parties aimed at constructing a basis for formal negotiations at the Workplace Relations Commission.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Government has announced it will enter a \u201cfocused and intensive exercise\u201d with unions in a bid to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1555,278176,42,278177,43,259341,1562,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-656848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-forsa","tag-forsa-staff-and-ahcps-picket-outside-garda-hq","tag-headlines","tag-in-the-phoenix-park","tag-news","tag-picket","tag-strike","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656848","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=656848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}