A planned strike by Luas drivers on Thursday now looks likely to go ahead after SIPTU and Luas operator Transdev failed to reach an agreement in their long-running pay dispute.

Transdev says drivers had sought pay increases of 26.5% in talks yesterday without offering additional productivity.

SIPTU has called on management to re-engage in negotiations in order to reach what they call a just solution.

Yesterday, the three non-driver grades at Luas voted to accept a 13% pay rise over three years.

Gerry Madden of Transdev said that the company remains open to talks.

“To think that we’re sort of 20 months on and considerable disruption and financial penalties that the company has incurred and significant disruption to our customers, that at this stage they’re still in a space which is only half of the original claims, so that’s still way off the scale for us,” he said.

“So we’re disappointed, but we remain open to sensible conversations.”

SIPTU’s Owen Reidy accused the company of not being open to a resolution.

“It’s very regrettable that this is happening, we would have thought it was avoidable,” said SIPTU’s Owen Reidy.

“The driver grade cancelled their industrial action that was due to take place towards the end of last week to create the space and the time to have these discussions.

“We thought by doing that, we might be received by a company in resolution mode with the drivers – unfortunately that wasn’t the case.”