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The Dáil is in recess for the summer, and the people who protest outside its gates can take a break too. KATHY SHERIDANmeets some of those who turn up at Leinster House almost every day, trying in vain to make themselves heard

ON WEDNESDAY, as Molesworth Street in Dublin fills with fired-up disability campaigners, the limitations of our principal public protest space are lamentably plain. The mildest of Greeks would take one look at the intersection of Molesworth and Kildare streets and chortle. When the former is closed to traffic for big protests, Kildare Street remains a busy, dusty thoroughfare for testy, honking motorists, effectively a broad divide between the ruled and the rulers. It’s a convenient one for the rulers, if not the benign gardaí who spend more time pulling protesters from the path of vehicles than policing the gates.