THOUSANDS OF workers in family resource centres, youth programmes and drugs projects took to the streets of Dublin yesterday to protest about current and proposed cuts to their sector.
The Communities against Cuts campaign said an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 people marched from Parnell Square to Molesworth Street before holding a rally outside the Dáil. Gardaí who attended the march provided a more conservative figure of about 8,000.
The campaign represents thousands of workers providing services to children, the elderly, disabled, recovering drug addicts, Travellers, young people and women in disadvantaged areas.
Community services such as meals on wheels, homework clubs and childcare could be affected if the McCarthy report proposals are implemented in full.
Women’s groups from Donegal and Clare stood beside Trócaire workers, inner city drug project staff and Dublin Port workers.
One placard asked “how many community projects does it take to save a bank?” Another said “stop robbing the poor to pay the rich”.
Government Ministers were also targeted by protesters. “Give Cowen and Lenihan the snip,” one poster said.
Marchers dressed in suits with bowler hats carried “Nama swag bags” and gave out fake money to passers-by. “It’s your money, take it back,” said Stephen Lewis, Siptu community branch organiser.
On O’Connell Street, the march stopped opposite the GPO to allow workers taking part in a hunger strike to join them. The workers had staged a 24-hour fast in protest over the McCarthy recommendation to cut employment schemes. “They say cutbacks. We say fight back,” the crowd chanted as they moved down O’Connell Street.
“Bankers play while communities pay,” they shouted as they passed some banks.
Shoppers, tourists and office workers on their lunch breaks paused to watch the march and some took photographs with their mobile phones as the marchers banged bodhráns and blew whistles and horns.
Campaign chairman David Connolly said the Government had to be stopped from doing more damage to the community sector. There had already been closures of community development projects and the McCarthy report proposals, if implemented, would result in the loss of a further 6,500 jobs in the community sector, he said.
Irish Congress of Trade Unions president Jack O’Connor told the crowds this was the first of many such marches and he urged people to fight against the cuts. “We’re not going to lie down and let them walk all over us,” he said. Impact deputy general secretary Shay Cody said the Government was “slashing and burning the vital services that we most need”.
Susan McKay of the National Women’s Council drew large cheers when she said women did not create the property boom and bust but they would be expected to clean up the mess. “There’s far more women cleaning the Dáil behind us than working in it as politicians,” she said. “It isn’t women who run the banks either and when did you last see a woman who said she was a property developer?”
Politicians such as Labour’s Pat Rabbitte, Joan Burton and Ivana Bacik attended the rally, as did Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams.
Demonstrators: what they said
Alison Conneely
She attended the march because of her work with Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Community Platform, a network of community groups in the area. She said she was most concerned at the impact of proposed cuts on family resource centres, drugs taskforces and youth projects.
“They are doing vital work in areas of serious disadvantage. Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown is perceived as a very wealthy county, but we know from research that there’s huge pockets of very, very disadvantaged areas there .”
Marie Hanlon
A project manager in a Coolock family support centre, she said the cuts in the services were going to have “a devastating impact on communities that are ravaged by heroin and cocaine addiction”.
“We’re going to lose five out of six workers on the ground,” she said.
“What can a one-worker project do? Families are suffering enough without all this carry-on.
“Fás trained up all these workers and now they are going to send them home.”
David O’Brien
He works in addiction services and was carrying an Impact banner at the march.
He hoped the huge turnout at the march would affect Government opinion on proposed cuts. “What’s the alternative? To be walked on?” he asked.
He said he had seen it all before in the 1980s.
“I lived through the ‘tighten-our- belt’ years. I bought the lie then. I won’t buy the lie twice.”
Bríd Foley
From Donegal Women’s Network, she was carrying a poster for the Lifford Clonleigh Resource Centre.
She said she feared that such centres would be subsumed into local partnerships.
“It would mean that local volunteers will no longer be managing local projects. It would be a top-down approach to decision-making in local area.
“Local people have been giving their time to developing the Lifford Clonleigh centre. Voluntary activity will decrease in the area if this happens.”
