This article is from page 16 of the 2014-11-04 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 16 JPG
continue in Clare, even if the Government introduces measures to water down the controversial charges in the coming days.
The membership of the Clare Says No To Water Charges group has swelled dramatically since Saturday’s protest and the group are now setting up local sub-groups in towns and villages across the county to spread information and organise members who are not contactable online. The group conf rmed yesterday that its members will also attend two national protests in Dublin on December 6 and 10 while a meeting will take place this Wednesday to discuss a number of local actions, which could include pickets and further protests.
An estimated 2,500 people attended protests against Irish Water in Ennis, Shannon and Westbury on Saturday. In excess of 1,500 people turned out in Ennis, with 50 protesting in Westbury and estimated numbers for the Shannon protest ranging from 500 people to 1,200 people.
“It was a good turnout, especially with the bad weather. We’re not shocked though, there is a lot of anger out there. What has happened over the weekend has highlighted this fact and there is more and more people getting involved. We’ve taking more than 200 new people into the group since Saturday alone,” said Paul Whitmore of Clare Says No To Water Charges.
“We are now organising for little groups to be set up in the small towns and villages for the people who don’t have broadband and who don’t have a way of communicating with us. People have a lot of questions and if they don’t have access to the group [online] they can feel isolated. We want this to be one big community group. It’s everyday ordinary people coming together.”
A large group from Shannon are also planning to take part in the Dublin protests – with local organiser Cllr Mike McKee (SF) promising to bring Dublin to a ‘standstill’.
“We’ve had reports of there being up to 1,200 at the Shannon protest so it was a really big turnout – it was the biggest protest in Shannon for very many years,” he said. “We are aff liated with the Right to Water protest on December 10. We will be going to the Dáil on that day and we hope to bring Dublin to a complete standstill.”