The Communications and Energy Minister says he's confident common sense will prevail and the ESB strike will not go ahead on Monday week, as threatened by workers.

Unions and management at the company are still locked in talks with the Labour Relations Commission in a dispute over a €1.6 billion hole in the workers' pension fund.

But Minister Pat Rabbitte says the pension scheme will be fully funded by 2018 - and therefore there's no need for this strike.

It's feared power outages may occur across the country from December 16th - if the action goes ahead.

However, Minister Rabbitte says the power cuts should be limited by the access to non-ESB generated power, such as wind generated power.

“We need just under some 5,000 megawatts in terms of our need to keep the lights on and keep factories and accompanies and businesses in operation. We would fall twelve or thirteen hundred megawatts short of that, depending on things like what would be generated by wind power and so on.

“There’s a huge component now of non-ESB generated power, obviously that would limit any outages,” Rabbitte said.

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