Over 10,000 people marched through Limerick city centre against austerity and the huge debt burden on Irish people. The event, which was organised by the Limerick Council of Trade Unions, took almost an hour to pass through the streets of the city centre to Pery Square where a rally took place.
Union members from a wide range of organisations including SIPTU, IMPACT,TEEU, INTO, CPSU, INMO, BATU, and UNITE joined with community, civil society and political groups in what was the biggest demonstration seen in the city for many years. Many people brought their children to join in the demonstration which was a colourful and good humoured affair with the crowd buoyed by the rousing tunes of the City of Limerick Pipe Band. Hundreds of shoppers came out on to the streets to watch and applaud the protesters as they made their way up O’Connell Street.
Addressing the Rally SIPTU Community Sector Activist, Gearóid Fitzgibbon expressed his disillusionment with the current government; "Here we are two years on still paying out billions to ease the burden on professional investors and gamblers. The local stroke politics still continues. Ministers doing favours in their own back yards. So we got a change of personnel. But the system remains unchanged."
Demanding "a real deal on debt" President of the Trades Council, Mike McNamara, described last week’s government announcement on the Anglo promissory note as “a fiasco and a feeble attempt to con the Irish people and relieve political pressure”.
The final speaker was IMPACT's Andy Pike who said: “The Limerick Council of Trade Unions calls on ICTU to continue this campaign, to call more protests, to honour the sacrifices and history of the 1913 Dublin lock out in the best way possible by continuing the campaign for an end to this austerity and an end to the notion that the people are responsible for these obscene banking debts.”
The rally concluded with a rousing version of "Jim Larkin" sung by SIPTU Official, Mike Kiely.
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