It’s Time to Take to The Streets!

18/09/09

Assemble at 1pm tomorrow (Saturday, September 19), Garden of Remembrance, Parnell Square.

Just over a year ago a panicked Dublin government stunned the rest of Europe when it announced its bank guarantee scheme. Three months later, in the December 2008 budget, Cowen and company introduced wide-ranging cutbacks to government expenditure and essential services. In April of this year an additional ‘emergency’ budget again focused on slashing government expenditure while simultaneously imposing higher rates of tax on ordinary workers.

Earlier this week the legislation enabling the greatest financial package in the history of the Twenty-Six County state, the National Asset Management Agency, was introduced to Leinster House. Under the NAMA proposals the ‘bad’ debts of the private banks will be nationalised by the state, leaving the banks with only the ‘good’ debts to worry about. Taxpayers for years, potentially generations to come, will pay for this insane version of Fianna Fáil nationalisation.

In December the Dublin government will announce yet further cuts to public expenditure, which will result in ever increasing hardship for working families from Donegal to Wexford. It is clear that the political establishment will stop at nothing to get the Twenty-Six counties’ capitalist system back on track – even if that includes the beggaring of a generation of Irish citizens, forced to repay the borrowings of Brian Cowen’s administration.

Tomorrow [Saturday, September 19] a coalition of political parties and organisations has organised a major protest in opposition to the ongoing cuts to public services and the bailing out of the private banks.

Speaking ahead of the protest, éirígí chairperson Brian Leeson said, “The time has come for the people to take to the streets. They alone have the power to stop the crazy policies of Fianna Fáil and the Greens. The only way that the anti-social plans of this government can be stopped is by building sufficient public pressure against them. If implemented, the Bord Snip cuts and the NAMA bailouts will wreck hundreds of working class communities and destroy the lives of hundreds of thousands of working class people, while protecting the profits of the business class.

“Throughout the years of economic boom, the Dublin government neglected the health service, the education system and every aspect of the state that is essential to the well being of working people. Now, in the economic crisis, the establishment is eager to strip away what little protections there are for those not lucky enough to possess an off-shore bank account or a seat in government buildings.

“It will take generations to recover from the damage that will be wrought on the fabric of Irish society if Colm McCarthy and his cronies get their way. The cuts must be vigorously opposed and, ultimately, the government brought down.”

Leeson continued: “For months now, people across the Twenty-Six Counties have been fighting back against creeping unemployment and the Dublin government’s complicity in the crimes of the business class with strikes, sit-ins and protests. Tomorrow’s march is the next step in that fight back.

“éirígí is calling for as many people as possible – those forced out of work, those whose jobs are under threat and the under paid – to converge on Dublin city centre tomorrow to give a strong message to the business class and their allies in Leinster House: we won’t do the time for your crimes.”