Good morning colleagues, 

The news from yesterday's Local Government and Local Services divisional conference includes Fórsa's prediction that industrial action over the proposed transfer of 3,500 local authority staff to Irish Water is “almost inevitable,” (reported by the Irish Times, RTE and some regional news outlets) and the union is to ballot local authority staff for industrial action in a dispute over the introduction of a job evaluation system for clerical and administrative staff (reported by the Irish Times and RTE and some regional news outlets).

There was a call for an end to the sale of public land to private property developers and the conference also heard that Fórsa has written to the chief executives of all local authorities in Ireland to ask them to engage with four-day week pilot programmes.