SIPTU says strike action planned at Aer Lingus and the three main Irish airports on Friday week will go ahead. However the union says it will fully co-operate with an expert panel appointed by government to try to resolve the long-running and bitter pensions dispute.

The panel was set up yesterday by the government in a bid to resolve the pension dispute between staff and management.

It is hoped the panel - chosen by members from ICTU, IBEC and the government - will be able to find a solution to the pensions row.

But a four-hour work stoppage will now go ahead on the Friday of the St. Patrick's weekend. The pensions committee of SIPTU says it will also meet again later this week to discuss further industrial action in the weeks ahead.

SIPTU sector organiser Dermot O'Loughlin said "The Pension Committees very much welcomed the appointment of the expert panel which was nominated by Congress and IBEC. SIPTU representatives will enter into discussions with the expert panel over the coming weeks with the aim of finding a resolution to this dispute".

In a statement, SIPTU says staff at Aer Lingus and the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) "have been unsuccessfully seeking to have their employers deal with the significant deficit in the Irish Airlines Superannuation Scheme (IASS) for several years".

Earlier Transport Minister Leo Varadkar had claimed that the planned strike would be called off. He is now struggling to understand why it has not been.