Over a 1,000 people took to the streets yesterday (Tuesday, May 11th) for the Right To Work Campaign protest at Dail Eireann.
The recently established Right to Work Campaign, which is a broad coalition of community, civil society, trade unions, political groups and individuals called the demonstration to oppose the escalating bailout of Irish Banks and calling instead for the government’s priority to be focused on bailing out jobs, incomes and public services for ordinary workers and citizens. The protest was also officially sponsored by the trade union UNITE and was addressed by Fintan O’ Toole (Journalist), John Bisset (Canal Communities), John Kidd (SIPTU Firefighters), Siobhan Mc Guire (Community Workers Co-Op) & others.
Police baton bank bailout protestors at Daíl from Paula Geraghty on Vimeo.
The PBPA, called for a “people’s rebellion” against the current government and it’s policies, which it said were leading to a decimation of jobs, incomes and public services, while protecting the institutions and wealthy elites that were responsible for the crisis in the first place.
Cllr Richard Boyd Barrett of the People Before Profit Alliance said: “Enough is enough. For more than a decade, this government has facilitated the greed of bankers and developers and those policies have brought the country to edge of an abyss. Yet even now, they refuse to change course. Instead they want ordinary working people and the most vulnerable in our society to pay the price for the greed of a few.
In just over 18 months, their policies have led to a jobs massacre, forcing tens of thousands of our best and brightest to leave this country to find work. They are decimating the incomes for ordinary people who bear no responsibility for this crisis and they are taking an axe to the vital public services on which the most vulnerable depend.
They claim all this is inevitable and necessary and that they have no money. Yet at the same time they pour tens of billions of public money into the banking institutions that created the crisis. They allow bankers whose criminal greed and irresponsibility to walk away with pensions worth millions and continue to pay those still running the banks obscene salaries. They continue to pour tens of millions into the pockets of developers whose greed for profit created the property madness that crashed the economy.
And despite all the talk of this being necessary medicine to help economic recovery, the situation is not getting better, it is getting worse. In fact, it is obvious that allowing unemployment to rip, slashing people’s incomes and slaughtering public services is actually accelerating the downward spiral in the economy. All this has to stop. We need to hold accountable those that are responsible for this economic disaster and take radical measures to claw back the wealth they have stolen. We need to stop bailing out rotten and dead banking institutions and instead invest in people, jobs, sustainable industry and social infrastructure.
To do this we need people’s rebellion on the streets. We need to do what the pensioners did when the government tried to rob them of their medical card entitlement. Only a massive mobilisation of people power can stop this madness and bring about a just solution to the current crisis.
So we would appeal to all those who are angry at what this government is doing; to all those who have lost jobs, and who have been hit by unfair and cruel cuts to take to the streets. And it’s important to stress, this is not simply a once off demonstration, once we come onto the streets we need to stay on the streets. This must be a rolling campaign of protests at the Dail and across the country against the injustice and stupidity of this government and the super-wealthy elites that they are protecting.”
Other media coverage of the protest:
Cllr Richard Boyd Barrett (PBPA) speaking on RTE’s Morning Ireland
Tonight with Vincent Browne on TV3 coverage of the protest
Cllr Richard Boyd Barrett (PBPA) & James O’Toole (Right to Work Campaign) on TV3 Ireland AM