Two days of protests to hit the city center

Thousands of people are expected to gather in Limerick City this week for two days of protest marches in the run-up to the next budget.

On Thursday community organisations will march against possible job cuts, with the intention of showing the Government that communities in Limerick and in the south west generally, “demand that their voices are heard.” Marchers will include members of local Community Employment schemes and other community projects such as job clubs and youth services.

“These cuts will rip the fabric of the community apart to the very core. The services and supports provided to the elderly, to childcare, to school-going children, to youth services and to families right throughout Limerick city and county will be in serious jeopardy if these cuts are implemented”, SIPTU organiser, Eddie Mullins said this week.

He says that young, elderly and families alike are supported by these organisations and subsequently are in the most vulnerable category and says as such they are seen by the Government as a “soft target.”

Their rally on Thursday begins at 12.30pm at the Mechanics Institute on Hartstonge Street.

Fridays march will see both the public and private sectors taking to the city streets as part of a “National Day of Action”. Organisers of the ‘Get up stand up” campaign, the ICTU, are calling on all community workers, activists and projects, whether they be a union members or not, to join the rally against a possible €4 billion cut in public expenditure in 2010.

The union says the cuts could cause a “severe deflationary shock in the economy and cause a decade long downward spiral, such as what occurred in Japan in the 1990s”

The protest on Friday in Limerick begins at 2.30pm and will also begin at the Mechanics Institute. Other protests are being held in Dublin, Cork, Galway, Waterford, Sligo, Dundalk and Tullamore.

Meanwhile in a statement issued through the Limerick Chamber of Commerce, Seán Murphy, Deputy Chief Executive of Chambers Ireland said on the issue of public sector pay, “Contrary to what the Unions are stating in their campaigns on public sector pay, we can either protect vital services or protect public sector pay and pensions, we simply cannot afford to do both.”

“If we really are all in this together, then solidarity would demand that everyone bears an equal share of the burden for closing the enormous hole that exists in the public finances”, he added.