Dublin protest over EU-IMF bailout

Several hundred people attended a protest march against the EU-IMF austerity programme in Dublin this afternoon.

The protest, organised by the Enough Campaign, was supported by trade unions, TDs, political organisations and groups seeking to maintain education and health services in their areas.

Campaigners said suggestions that the State's implementation of the EU-IMF austerity programme was going well were badly misplaced.

People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett, an organiser of the march said: "We are absolutely determined to mobilise mass opposition to this economic madness over the coming weeks and bring the spirit of Greek, Spanish and for that matter Egyptian style resistance to this country."

"This day, it's not just going to be about speeches, we have had too much of that stuff where it is a few speeches and everybody goes home and that's the end of it. This has to be the beginning of building a movement," he told protesters.

The protest continued until shortly before 4pm when heavy rain forced the protestors to disperse.

Some of the groups that took part in the march included the Socialist Party, Free Education for Everybody, Unite, the Special Needs Action Group, the Waterford Council of Trade Unions, the Sligo Workers Alliance and the save Wexford General Hospital campaign.

Jimmy Kelly regional secretary of Unite said "the key strategy has to be to unite. Unless we do unite all those campaigns, we will be picked off one by one."

Earlier this week, the EU-IMF-ECB "troika" said that Ireland was "on track" and "well financed" after the third quarterly review of the €82 billion bailout.

Ireland's borrowing costs would be lower and there would be "good prospects" of returning to the bonds markets if it weren't for wider euro zone crisis, the troika said.

"The problems that Ireland faces are not just an Irish problem," said IMF deputy director Ajai Chopra. "They're a shared European problem. What we need and what's lacking so far is a European solution to a European problem."