The North

RALLIES AGAINST job and budget cuts were held yesterday in Belfast and Derry to mark the day of action against the impending austerity measures that British chancellor George Osborne is to announce next month.

With the prospect of £2 billion in budget reductions in Northern Ireland over the next four years leading to a possible 40,000 job losses, union leaders warned of the destabilising effects of such cuts.

Union organisers estimated that up to 5,000 people attended the rallies outside Belfast City Hall and Derry’s Guildhall. Peter Bunting, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions assistant general secretary told the Belfast rally that many of the reasons given for the cuts in public spending were based on “myths”. Such cuts would lead the North into an economic depression which would “wreak havoc”, he said.

“It is a myth that government debt has never been higher. It was more than three times higher after the second World War and that generation built the National Health Service and the modern welfare state,” he said. “It is not true that the UK’s debt is one of the worst in the developed world. It is far higher in the USA, Canada, Japan and the major European economies.”

Among the Assembly politicians who attended the rallies were the Ulster Unionist Minister of Health Michael McGimpsey, Sinn Féin Education Minister Caitríona Ruane, Sinn Féin junior Minister Gerry Kelly and Independent MLA Dawn Purvis.