STAFF AT OBERSTOWN Children Detention Campus are to stage a 48-hour work stoppage next week as an ongoing dispute over staffing and resources escalates.

Trade union Fórsa has served notice that its members will stop work from 12.01am next Monday, 31 August, until 11.59pm on Tuesday, 1 September.

Before then, members are due to hold a 12-hour stoppage between 9am and 9pm on Tuesday, with a picket outside the campus.

The action will be the fourth in a series of weekly stoppages which began earlier this month.

Fórsa said there will be no exemptions from the industrial action for social care work, with the only derogation applying to catering at the campus.

The escalation comes a day after Oberstown director Damien Hernon called for a “ceasefire” in the dispute, warning that the industrial action itself had the potential to increase risks at the State’s only child-detention facility.

He urged workers to “step this down” to allow efforts to resolve the dispute to progress.

Fórsa members have been engaged in industrial action over what they say are inadequate staffing levels at the campus, which consistently operates close to capacity.

Assistant general secretary Deirdre O’Connell said today that the union’s members wanted a lasting solution which ensured the safety of both staff and young people at Oberstown.

“The Minister and the department need to engage here,” O’Connell said.

“The [Department of Children]‘s plans to increase the number of beds at Oberstown fail to acknowledge the capacity challenges we are already dealing with. Staff and residents continue to face increased risks to personal safety.”

O’Connell warned that the dispute was “set to continue” unless those concerns were acknowledged by Oberstown management and the Department of Children.

The union said it remained available for “meaningful, solution-focused engagement”.

Oberstown has disputed Fórsa’s characterisation of staffing and safety at the campus.

It said on Sunday that 23 frontline staff had been recruited over the past year, resulting in a net increase of nine workers, while recorded incidents on the campus had fallen by 29% compared with the same period last year.

The Department of Children has previously said Oberstown received more than €2.1 million in additional funding in Budget 2026 to increase staffing, including funding for 11 additional whole-time equivalent posts.

Fórsa members began a work-to-rule in June, including refusing to cooperate with overtime, before escalating to work stoppages this month.

Talks between the union and management, including engagement through the Workplace Relations Commission, have so far failed to resolve the dispute.