Thursday’s strike action by Luas drivers will go ahead after SIPTU and Luas operator Transdev failed to reach an agreement over a long running pay dispute.

Talks between the two sides, which began at 4pm today, were adjourned – after Transdev and SIPTU couln’t agree over pay levels for drivers.

Earlier, the three non-driver grades at light rail service voted to accept the latest pay offer from Transdev.

Revenue protection officers voted to accept by 75 per cent, while their supervisor grade voted to accept by 85 percent.

Traffic supervisors are understood to have accepted the deal by around 75 per cent as well.

SIPTU’s Owen Reidy says it’s regrettable that an agreement between the drivers and the company couldn’t be reached: “Regrettably the company are not in that space, their position is somewhat south of the WRC proposals and that led to a stalemate.

“They ended the discussions this evening by saying they felt there were no basis for further negotiations and Thursdays action for the driver grade will proceed.”

And Gerry Madden of Transdev admits there’s a big gap between the sides: “They’re in a place where, still way off any reasonable deal that we can do, they are looking in the region of 26.5%.

“The deal we’ve done last week that were formally accepted today with the other grades was 13% so we have a significant gap still to be closed between ourselves and the drivers.”