Irish Rail loses benefits payment case

Iarnród Éireann has lost a High Court bid to overturn a finding that more than 100 of its employees were entitled to social welfare benefit during a period of industrial unrest involving train drivers in 2000.

Iarnród Éireann had taken judicial review proceedings aimed at quashing the Social Welfare Tribunal's 2004 decision that some 100 employees were entitled to unemployment benefit or unemployment assistance when they were not at work between June 19th and August 1st, 2000.

Mr Justice Roderick Murphy yesterday dismissed the company's claim. He said the tribunal's decision was based on fact and was conclusive unless there was a point of law justifying the court's intervention. No such point of law had arisen in the case, he ruled.

The tribunal's decision arose from a dispute involving train driver employees who in 2000 were members of the Irish Locomotive Drivers' Association (Ilda) but who have since joined the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers' Union (ATGWU).

Iarnród Éireann had claimed that the employees' absence from work was due to a considered decision on an individual and collective basis to refuse to work in accordance with the terms and conditions of their employment. It was claimed that this amounted to unofficial action and the employees were not entitled to social welfare benefits.

It submitted that, in a book published in 2003, Ilda secretary Brendan Ogle had referred to the industrial dispute as an organised, collective work stoppage. Those claims were denied by the tribunal.

In its submissions, the ATGWU, a notice party to the action, argued that the tribunal had acted lawfully and said Ilda had regarded the stoppage of 2000 as a "lock-out" by their employers.

© 2007 The Irish Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times