Given that Cork City Council has decided to withhold pay due to its firefighters under the terms of a national pay agreement, that every other local authority in the State has honoured the agreement and paid its firefighters and that this decision to renege now places Cork two weeks away from an official firefighters dispute, is the Taoiseach prepared to ask the Minister for Finance to sign a ministerial order instructing Cork City Council to immediately pay the moneys owed?

I am aware of the dispute but not the details of the claim. Should it not be possible to resolve the issue between the local authority's management and the representatives of the firefighters I suggest that State intervention may be required. That intervention should be by the Workplace Relations Commission. We established the latter as a State body precisely because it has the expertise to intervene in such disputes. If the local authority and the firefighters' representatives cannot resolve the issue at a workplace level, that is the intervention that should occur.