150 staff members at the State’s only youth detention centre will walk off the job today.

Residential care workers and supervising staff at Oberstown Children’s Detention Campus in Dublin are taking the action due to a dispute over poor safety measures and increasing assaults on the campus.

The IMPACT and Siptu trade unions, which represent the employees says the work stoppage will take place from 8am until 4pm and will see residents confined to their rooms during that time.

The unions say there were more than 100 violent incidents in the centre last year, almost half of which were classed as critical.

Assistant General Secretary with IMPACT, Tom Hoare, said: “The real seroius matter for us is that it is not reasonable to expect men and women, childcare workers to go into work and run the risk, as they do every single day, of being injured and hurt.

“In many cases, there are serious amounts of sick leave.

“The only official figures that we have, have identified that last year alone 3,000 days were lost in relation to sick leave arising from assaults and injuries.”