Tens of thousands of Irish workers protest in streets

By Antonella Ciancio

DUBLIN (Reuters) – Irish trade unions led tens of thousands of workers on Friday in street protests against government plans to cut spending in next month’s budget for 2010.

Prime Minister Brian Cowen has said he must find savings worth 4 billion euros (3.57 billion pounds) in the December 9 budget, mostly by cutting spending, just to stabilise the budget deficit at around 12 percent of GDP, four times the EU’s limit.

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions hopes the demonstrations in Dublin and seven other towns will help persuade Cowen to bring the deficit in line with EU rules more gradually by 2017, and not by 2013 as Cowen has pledged to the European Commission.

“We hope that the government realises that there is a strong opinion against the budget proposals. We hope that they will look at our plan which is for a more gentle transition in the period of adjustment,” ICTU General Secretary David Begg told Reuters.

Police estimated that around 20,000 protesters took to the streets in Dublin, the largest of the marches, where workers held banners criticising the government’s proposed cuts and its action to cleanse the banking sector.

ICTU President Jack O’Connor told protesters that the number gathered in Dublin was more like 70,000 and that 80,000 people had protested across the rest of the country.

STRIKE LOOMS

The former ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy has only avoided an Iceland-style collapse thanks to support from the European Central Bank, which will cash in 54 billion euros of bonds Dublin plans to pay for assets transferred to a “bad bank.”

“The government has been extremely unfair with the ordinary workers,” John Kidd, chairman of the Dublin Fire Brigade, said while marching down Dublin’s main thoroughfare O’Connell Street.

“We have never benefited from the ‘Celtic Tiger’. We are asking the government for a fairer society,” said Kidd, one of 100,000 emergency workers who will vote on industrial action next week.

IMPACT, Ireland’s largest public sector union, wants the country’s 310,000 public servants to join a 24-hour strike on November 24.

The Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) urged Dublin to cut expenditure boldly this week, saying spending in politically sensitive areas such as education and health should reflect deflationary realities.

“Tell the OECD to go to the supermarket every week and tell us where lower prices are,” said Phyllis Plant, a 60-year-old cleaner.

The government has said failure to act quickly on the budget would eventually land Ireland in the hands of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which would impose even tougher cuts.

“In view of the size of the current budget deficit, 12 percent of what we are worth, we have to take this corrective action immediately,” Defence Minister Willie O’Dea told public radio RTE.

“We are politicians, we don’t want to be doing unpopular things … but we simply have no alternative,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Padraic Halpin; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)