Up to 120,000 people march in national protest

Up to 120,000 people have marched in Dublin in protest at how the Government is handling the economic crisis. The march, which was organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (Ictu), took nearly one and a half hours to make its way from Parnell Square to Merrion Square.

Ictu maintained that the protest today was the first step in a campaign in support of a fairer way to achieve economic recovery.

Addressing the demonstration Ictu general secretary David Begg said that “a business elite” had destroyed the economy and had not yet been held to account for it in any respect.

Mr Begg called on the Government to talk to the trade union movement on its alternative ten-point plan for economic recovery.

He said that Ictu’s ten-point plan was not perfect but that it was the best offer that it would get “and if you are sensible you will engage with us and talk to us about it.”

He said that no balance had been put forward by the Government in its solutions for dealing with the current economic crisis. He said that there was no sense of a sharing of the burden right across the economy "not alone that it should be shared by the people who were best able to bear it and who had done best in the Celtic tiger years”.

The president of Ictu, Patricia McKeown, said that the Government wanted workers who built the economy to make the sacrifices while it protected those who wrecked it.

“We are not prepared to live in that society,” she said.

Ms McKeown said that the time had come for Irish workers to demonstrate to the Government the power they really held.

“That power is today on the streets of Dublin, it is in industrial action but most significantly it is at the ballot box.

“If our Government and the elected politicians are not prepared here and now to pledge that they will act now and act on our behalf and act on the proposals we have placed before them then you must be prepared to deny them even a single vote and to send that message out loud and clear,” she said.

Mr Begg said that the reputation of the country had been almost irreparably damaged by what had been done so far.

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