Galway

SHORT-TERM savings by the State will “simply result in long-term social and economic costs”, trade union Siptu said at a joint demonstration in Galway yesterday.

The public also deserves “a new type of Ireland” that does not repeat the mistakes of the “Celtic Tiger” era, the Community Workers’ Co-Operative (CWC) said at a joint community workers and trade union demonstration in Galway’s Eyre Square. CWC co-ordinator Ann Irwin said it was time the Government listened to economists who were warning of the negative “spiral” created by cuts. “Such cuts will get us nowhere and we need to be calling on all of our politicians to start listening to a different way – such as different ways of taxing people.”

A human chain formed around a pyramid of supporting organisations marked the opening of yesterday’s joint campaign by community organisations and the trade union movement.

Anastasia Crickley of the Community Workers Co-Op said it was “legitimately concerned about potential job losses, estimated by Brian Harvey in a recent report to be as high as 4,500, but we are even more concerned about the loss to the most disadvantaged and poorest communities of the work that these employees carried out every day”.

The campaign organisers say that the community and voluntary sector employs over 50,000 people and delivers a range of vital programmes and services.

Earlier, the Galway “Say No to Healthcuts” campaign held a short demonstration outside Anglo Irish Bank in the city.