A Spring Stroll through Dublin

Last Monday I went to Dublin with hubby Jan for the day as we had some business to deal with which involved two meetings in the city centre. Both were across the Liffey on the Southside; one on the quays and the other off Baggot Street, near St. Stephen's Green, the leafy centre of Dublin, famed in many a song and story.

I spent years living and working in Dublin from my student years and between travels abroad and while I wouldn't swop country life for city life any more, I loved the buzz of the city when I was footloose and fancy free. It's a great time to be in the city: no cares in the world other than studying, working and getting from one party to another by bike, in no particular order of importance!

We had a lovely day driving up from Lismore -we drove via Cork as we dropped Shayne and Jany and Sofia back home before driving on the nice nearly-new motorway to Dublin, with not a plane in the skies, which were fluffy cumulus clouds all day long, no sign of the Icelandic Volcanic ash that had grounded every plane in Northern Europe. (The link above gives you some jokes on the volcano!)

We parked at our friends' house in Glasnevin which is one of the few free-parking streets left in Dublin, and walked into the city centre, down Dorset Street and O'Connell Street via Temple Street and Parnell Square, by the Garden of Remembrance and the Gate Theatre and the GPO, scene of the Easter Rising in 1916, all famous and historical landmarks.

After our meetings we came back by Kildare Street, home of the Dáil (Irish Parliament) at Leinster House, and Trinity College. While Jan stopped to take a call on his mobile on College Green, I took some snapshots of Irish "mounties" - Gardai on horseback riding around by Trinity College (home of the Book of Kells) and of the statue of Thomas Moore, the 19th Century poet whose ballads were collectively known as Moore's Melodies.

Some are cited in some Joycean works - there was a plaque in the footpath (pavement) to mark one quote from Ulysses. That's a book I confess to not having read, Dubliners being the only one of his books I could master. Mind you there are many Irish people who are defeated by his writings even if he is the father of Irish literature - the greatest Irish writer nearly never read. This plaque is at the foot of the statue of Moore, directly opposite the Bank of Ireland which in colonial days housed the Houses of Parliament.

Across O'Connell Bridge to "de Nortsoide" of the once-whiffy River Liffey - now pristinely unpolluted and repopulated with fish and university rowing club kayaks and canoes - to O'Connell Street, the main drag of Dublin.

The photo from the bridge shows Liberty Hall, SIPTU trade union HQ and still the tallest building in Dublin. This street has undergone major refurbishment in recent years, including wider footpaths, a car-free roadway only open to public transport (taxis, buses, Luas trams) and the dubious crowning glory of the Millenium Spire. This needle has spawned colloquialisms that true to Dublin wit are far more apt if cruder than the official title. The Skewer by the Sewer, the Stiffy by the Liffey, and the Stiletto in the Ghetto are but some of its more printable monikers. The photo of the Spire also shows the statue of that hero of the worker, Big Jim Larkin, founder of the ITGWU and honoured in Irish Labour Party circles to this day.

We had something to eat with our son who's doing his Graphic Design MA in Dublin Institute of Technology this year - I had a treat I only enjoy in Dublin from the Perky Chick Italian Chipper on Dorset Street - Curry Chips and Battered Cod (Joke alert - why are chefs cruel? 'Cos they whip cream and batter the fish!) which is the tastiest around. I love real chipper chips which are chunky and made from real spuds, and fish that's a proper fillet in batter that's deep-fried before my eyes, by a genuine Italian chipper proprietor (even if they are often 2nd or 3rd generation, it's a unique trade they pursue and they have even lately formed a brand organisation ITICA.

We collected our car and had a cuppa tea and a chat with our friend and his son, and were on the home stretch before 8pm. We listened to The Arts Show on Radio One and watched an amazing sunset on the way home, again thanks to the Icelandic volcano (we tell ourselves, though there's no real proof of a link - just romantic speculation), and arrived home about 10.30pm.

I enjoyed being a passenger as I was able to take some photos (including the one of the iconic Irish Independent printing press on the Naas Road and Avoca in Rathcoole), and have a snooze en route.

By the end of 2010 it should be motorway all the way from Cork to Dublin, which will shorten our trip even more as the current bottleneck of Abbeyleix will be bypassed. Hard to believe that 10 years ago there was hardly any motorway between our two main cities. All that'll be needed then are some Services - there are no pit stops anywhere on our motorway network and tenders haven't even been requested, so strong bladders will be needed for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, enjoy the views of our stroll through our historical capital city.


The photos from the top are:

• The Spire and Big Jim Larkin on O'Connell Street
• The M1 near Fermoy, Co. Cork
• College Green with Bank of Ireland and Trinity College
• The Joycean Plaque at College Green
• The Statue of Thomas Moore, College Green
• O'Connell Bridge with Libery Hall
• Irish Mounties on College Green by Trinity College
• Bank of Ireland (ex-Parliament Houses)
• Avoca cafe Rathcoole, Naas Road
• Independent Printing Press, Citywest, Naas Road
• Sunset from M1 near Portlaoise

My First Strike - Picket Lines and the Public Sector

Today was a red-letter day for me as I went on strike for the first time in my life. I spent the day on or around the picket lines at Dungarvan Community Hospital which was our designated local workplace for picket duty and it was an absolutely filthy day weather-wise. It was cold and windy and rained from about 11 o'clock onwards.

The strike was the culmination of a joint effort by all the Trade Unions in the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) to galvanise the public sector against the government's unfair targeting and villifying of the civil and public sector workers in the current recession. It was not an impulsive or petulant action - rather it was the result of frustration at the intransigence of the government to listen to or engage with the Union leadership in any serious negotiations on proposals to cut pay again in the coming budget.

We are prepared to do our patriotic duty as Brian Lenihan called it last year in his Budget speech but we are not prepared to be sitting ducks for slash and burn cuts and back-door hatchet jobs on our pay, while the banks are being bailed out and many of the self-same bankers that bankrupted the country (apt word that) are wondering how soon they can bring back their bonus payments and lift the cap the government imposed on their CEOs. €500,000 was the cap set just in case any of you were wondering how heartless it was to expect a bank CEO to survive on a pittance pay cut - now that's down from the €2.9 million that the (former) head of Bank of Ireland was paid last year and his response at being asked whether he was taking a pay cut last year was to say that he too would be earning less than €2 million this year! A joke that spectacularly backfired as the opprobrium of a nation poured down on his hapless head and he slinked out the door - followed by a fat pension. That's falling on your sword Irish business style while the nurses, gardai (police), civil and public servants are getting unilateral levies of approx. 7.5% imposed on their pensions and mileage pay cut by 25% without any consultation last May. So that's the background to today's day of action and strike.

I am the local representative for the INO (Irish Nurses' Organisation) Public Health Nurses and I ended up organising things for our members in the Waterford area. This was mainly communicating and liaising with everyone and ensuring that everyone knew what to do, as well as finalising picket duty rosters. This meant everyone was expected to do a two-hour stint on picket duty and they had to sign in as well, so that the union will know who participated. There is a strong moral obligation on members to fulfil their role as union members by taking an active role in a strike or any industrial action and thankfully most INO members recognise that and showed up and did their patriotic duty today.

There is a real sense of grievance at the treatment and perception of the public sector that is promulgated by the right-wing media and by the government which will lead to further unrest and probably more strike days. There is a real divide and rule approach pitting the public and private sector against each other which is detrimental to both, and yet it is very hard to stay silent in the face of such vilification. Many in the private sector are of the opinion that we should be grateful to have a job and perceived job security and put up or shut up.

As someone who worked in both the private and public sector I can appreciate some of the frustration of those poorly paid private sector workers who are now in very vulnerable situations and at risk of losing their jobs but the country needs solidarity not division right now - the vitriol towards the public sector is unfairly tarring everyone with the same brush - we accept the need for restraint in public spending and that's why we can't understand why there isn't a higher tax band for high earners as proposed last year by Labour, and why the TDs (MPs) are able to draw down their pension after 10 years services while we wait 30-40 years to retire on a half salary, or why the low paid are always being expected to contribute disproportionately. Mary Harney told people to shop around - now when they go to Newry and other Northern Ireland towns to shop they are accused of economic treason by spending their money outside the state!

This will go on - but for now I am stopping. We may be back on the pickets on December 3rd if the Union-Government talks are stonewalled.

The March of the Masses

Saturday saw the biggest mass gathering of angry citizens and workers in recent memory who collectively marched in protest against the government's approach to the economic crisis. I wrote in my last post about the inequity of the proposed pension levy on public sector workers, and the turnout for yesterday's march organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) showed the level of emotion felt by many in both the private and public sector.

The INO group gathering at the Garden of Remembrance

Jan and myself set off at 6:00a.m. for the 130 mile trip to Dublin for the afternoon march, preceded by a morning joint Labour Party/PES (European Socialist Party) Summit in Dublin with the theme "The State of the Nation". It was inspiring to hear such committed speakers offering valid and viable solutions to the crises we are mired in and depressing to hear how abysmal our fiscal reputation has become in international circles, we are a notch above junk bond status and our interest rate on borrowings is over 2% higher than that paid by more stable economies like Germany, such is our perceived risk.

Can you read the poster held by one of the INO staff? Not very complimentary on "Sherriff Brian"!

The march was led by the recently laid-off Waterford Crystal workers who have been told their pensions may be no more, despite having paid for years into a pension scheme or, for those laid off a few years ago when the Dungarvan factory closed, invested their redundancy money into shares, and the newly redundant may not even get decent redundancy pay.

SR Technics also fronted the march, they are the workers from former Team Aer Lingus who have been told their jobs in aircraft maintenance are going from Ireland - not to a low pay country like somewhere in the Far East, but Switzerland! That is just unbelieveable, that Ireland loses jobs to a non-EU country with a higher standard of living than here. I don't know too much of the background to this story, but it showed the solidarity between those in the private sector and the public sector that they marched together in what the government had been spinning as a protest by the greedy public sector against paying a fair share when many are losing jobs. We are the last handy scapegoat, I guess.

I was with the INO (Irish Nurses Organisation) group and we were there in good numbers; totally it was estimated that between 100,000 and 120,000 marched. Jan marched under the Labour Party banner, along with Jane, another Lismore member. The mood was upbeat and the sense of anger palpable, but there was no violence like that which marred some marches a few years ago, nor was there any sense of hostility from the bystanders, which was great as we were given to understand that the private sector would be no way sympathetic to the march. It has got good international coverage as I have just watched it on Dutch TV.

Every trade union was represented from the teachers and nurses, gardai (police) of all ranks, the military, fire service, civil service of all ranks, and the umbrella unions like Unite who comprise a number of bodies It was heartening to see the diversity of the gathering, and there were marching bands and funky drummers keeping the spirits of the marchers going.

Two views of O'Connell Street with the Spire (a.k.a the Skewer by the Sewer or the Stiffy by the Liffey!) in the background.

Have a look at the photos on the Irish Times slide show which have some great shots of the day. I have some of my own photos up as well.

The banking scandals continue to take us by surprise, or the revelations are being drip-fed to us in the vain hope of off-setting an even angrier reaction - the latest on the blighted bank we are all co-owners of, Anglo-Irish, is that 15 of their clients each owe half a billion Euro (that's 500 million/€500,000,000 for those confused about the zeros and the difference between European and American billions.) Total owed by 15 people = 7.5 billion Euro. This bank was for the elite developers and fatcat clientele, not for the ordinary Joe Soap. There seems to be faint hope of that money ever being repaid, and given the plummeting value of assets held as collateral the true value of the debt may never be realised, with property plummeting as the bubble has well and truly burst.

A good vantage point from the Daniel O'Connell monument's angels!

All this puts the pension levy into perspective in the overall context of the state of the economy - it will barely register a blip on the national debt and yet it will have a hugely negative impact on those affected, spending power and disposable income will be way down and the knock-on effect of less buying will be seen in shops and businesses closing as they are each week, with more joining the dole queues. The cost of social welfare is skyrocketing, with every job lost resulting in one less contributor paying tax and costing the exchequer in payments and allowances, which will barely keep the recipient above the breadline, if not the poverty line.
The INO group arriving at Government Buildings and below, some of the posters on the railings of the National Gallery

I hope that there will be some positive outcome for the protesters, not least a rethink on the scope of the levy to include the higher paid private sector and semi-state bodies, and the president and the judiciary, who, by some arcane constitutional clause, are exempt. If there was a sense of fairness in the distribution of the pain then I feel there would be more understanding from the general public. If it was seen that there was genuine action taken against the perpetrators of the bust like the bankers and developers who have flouted protocol and procedure and gambled away the boom with our money, then the government could call in our patriotic duty with some justification.

The state of the nation.

I have shied away from this becoming an overtly political blog as the blogosphere is awash with them, and if they are from people with my own (left) leanings, then they are readable and enjoyable as I can empathise with them. I will occasionally write some posts with a polemic approach, if I feel strongly about something (as in this post on African colonialism some weeks back) - though I am not aggressive enough to be a true polemiscist by definition!)

This is a "cat's eye" on the road near Lismore - I like the imagery of the Irish Tricolour being driven over by the cubs of the Celtic Tiger which is now barely miaowing.

What has me exercised at the moment is the state of this nation and the carry on of the bankers and what they are getting away with - they have arrogantly bled the economy during the boom with the encouragement and collusion of the right wing Fianna Fáil government, and now when it all goes pear-shaped we are the ones paying for their excesses.

No-one will be called to account and as long as these high-stakes gamblers of our money stayed marginally within the law, morality and ethics don't seem to matter. Now we are all bankers - or owners of a pretty toxic bank - since Anglo-Irish Bank was nationalised a few weeks back. It isn't something you would be bragging about as it seems every day uncovers a new scandal relating to the wheelings and dealings that went on.

The latest insult to the national intelligence is the decision - unilateral - of the government to levy a hefty increase on the pension contribution of the workers in the public sector, which includes me, and most other nurses and teachers, and all civil servants. The rationale for this levy, designed to raise €2 Billion (euro) is that the public sector workers are guaranteed a fine fat pension on retirement with a guaranteed income based on final salary. Which all sounds fine and dandy, and has set us up as grasping pariahs in the eyes of many in the private sector, but is only half the story.

The government would like us all to be as placid as this cow -we need to know our place!

To qualify for a full retirement pension one has to have accrued 40 years of service, and to have paid contributions throughout. The final pension includes the State Pension (the old Old Age Pension in pre-PC days) and many of those who are at the lower end of the spectrum will never get much more than their State Pension, as their final salary would not be much higher than twice the State Pension. The most you can get is half your final salary, after 40 years, and pro-rata below this. The reality for most public servants is that most will not have 40 years service.

This can be partly explained by the bizarre (by todays' standards) ruling that required women to resign from their civil service jobs on marriage! This "Marriage Bar" was firmly in place until 1973, and shows how the past really is another country! The consequences of this is that many competent and talented women were lost to the public sector in those pre-feminism days, and have never re-entered the workplace at a similar level. Those who did resume work after children were reared rarely resumed similar work, and those who did were penalised by having to buy back missed years through either costly AVCs (Additional Voluntary Contributions) or equally expensive PNS (Purchase of Notional Service) payments.

No public servant has an opt-out option regarding their pension. The new levy which is a pay cut in any language is on a sliding scale based on salary, and is capped at 9.6% for those earning over €300,000. So there is inequity even there - it is easier to miss 9.6% at that earning capacity than to have a levy of 5.8% on €30,000 for a lower-paid worker.

So tomorrow there is a big rally in Dublin to protest at the levy and the inequity of targeting the public sector when the fat cats who were responsible for the economic downturn have got off scotfree. I will be there marching through Dublin city centre to Government Buildings, under the banner of my trade union, the INO - Irish Nurses Organisation - who are protesting along with all the other unions in the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) and probably many who are non-affiliated.

The government is trying hard to drive a wedge between the private sector and the public sector by a divide and rule classic colonial ploy, and the unions are determined not to let this red herring undermine the reality of our anger. The levy is unfair and inequitable by excluding those top-earners in the banks and financial institutions who creamed it during the boom. The public sector is an easy target, and it is to the shame of the policy makers that they disingenuously state that this is the price we have to pay for job security and a guaranteed pension. That this pension can be a pittance for many who through no fault of their own spent many years outside the workforce is conveniently forgotten.

I will have photos from the demonstration for another post - meanwhile please show your support for our actions and if you can - join in the rally and be at Parnell Square at 2p.m. tomorrow, virtually or in person!