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27 August 2010

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Fianna Fáil failure on jobs and emigration highlighted in protests by Sinn Féin

 

Councillor Maurice Quinlivan, Martin Ferris TD and Séamus Sherlock with Sinn Féin members in Limerick

 

SINN FÉIN activists have been busy on the ground in the summer weeks campaigning on bread and butter issues affecting families.

Fianna Fáil TDs and councillors are feeling the heat from Sinn Féin councilors across the state demanding that the Government pulls the plug on the ESB price hike that will come with a planned 5% levy.

Sinn Féin TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh led party members to support a protest at ESB HQ in Dublin against the ESB cutting off more than 200 people a week because they’re finding it hard to pay bills.

Unemployed Seamus Sherlock chained himself to railings at the ESB HQ yesterday in protest at threats to cut off his electricity even though he offered to pay €50 a week off outstanding bills. Interviewed on Joe Duffy’s RTÉ Radio Liveline show, Seamus acknowledged the help he’d got from Limerick Sinn Féin Councillor Maurice Quinlivan and Martin Ferris, Sinn Féin TD for North Kerry/West Limerick. (You can see some of the protest on the An Phoblacht YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/aprnonline)

Across the state, Sinn Féin and Ógra Shinn Féin have held warmly-welcomed, high-profile protests at airports and seaports against the Government’s failure to tackle unemployment and the consequent emigration problem.

The Fianna Fáil/Green Party’s Government’s seemingly endless generosity with taxpayers’ money to banks and building societies who show little sympathy for struggling mortgage holders has prompted a number of actions outside banks across the state.

One of the most popular actions was at the Bank of Ireland in Patrick Street, Cork, where a public sick of being sponged off and drained by the banks enthusiastically took up the invitation to vent their anger and ‘Soak a Banker’ for change (Ógra Shinn Féin National Organiser Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire soaked up the pressure as ‘The Banker’).

Held as part of Cork Sinn Féin’s energetic local housing campaign, Councillor Jonathan O’Brien said:

“The Government’s indifference to the plight of ordinary homeowners struggling with mortgage arrears and negative equity, or the 100,000 waiting for social housing, is in sharp contrast to the extraordinary commitment it has shown to bailing out the banks.

“Those same banks which owe their continued existence to the support of the taxpayer are trying to claw back losses incurred by their own recklessness and are now threatening householders who cannot pay their mortgages with eviction.”

The Sinn Féin councilor said that vacant properties taken over by NAMA should be handed over to local authorities to provide homes for some of the 100,000 people on the housing waiting list.

The campaign of resistance against water charges is building up in areas like Dublin Mid-West, where Sinn Féin members have collected more than 2,000 signatures on a petition door-to-door and held a number of public meetings.

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