Some 2,000 anti-bin-charge campaigners marched on Mountjoy Prison last night demanding the release of the jailed TD, Mr Joe Higgins, and his Socialist Party colleague, Ms Clare Daly. Frank McNally and Anne Lucey report.
Mr Higgins and Ms Daly were sentenced to a month in jail last Friday for defying a court injuction against obstructing bin lorries in protest against charges in Fingal council area.
The independent TD, Mr Tony Gregory, was among those who attended the rally, which began at the Garden of Remembrance and was boosted by a number of protesters who had earlier attended a Reclaim The Streets demonstration.
Organisers claimed a turnout of 5,000, while gardaí put the crowd at between 1,500 and 2,000. But a Socialist Party councillor, Ms Ruth Coppinger, said the attendance had given the lie to media claims that the anti-bin-charge campaign had little support.
"This is a grassroots movement representing thousands and thousands of people, and the political establishment will ignore it at their peril," she said.
Speakers at the event included Mr Mick O'Reilly of the ATGWU, who said the jailing of Mr Higgins and Ms Daly offered a "magnificent opportunity" for campaigners to appeal to the many who were outraged by the sentences, irrespective of their view of the bin charge.
Another speaker, Mr Denis Keane of the Civil and Public Service Union, suggested to cheers that if the trade union movement got behind the campaign, "we'll close down this city".
A member of the Scottish Parliament, Ms Rosie Kane, said Higgins had the political establishment in Ireland "crapping themselves".
But she was heckled by some speakers when she spoke at length about contacts she had made with the TD in the case of an African asylum-seeker in who was trying to return to Dublin from Scotland. "We're here about the bins," a number of protesters shouted.
Earlier yesterday Mr Higgins's 85-year-old mother called for her son's release after travelling more than 220 miles from Lispole on the Dingle Peninsula in Co Kerry to visit him in Mountjoy.
Mrs Ellen Higgins said he and Ms Daly should be released next Thursday "at the very latest," after a week in prison.
A month was "too harsh, too harsh," she added. "He is not a criminal. They are not criminals."
Mrs Higgins, who had never been in a prison before, said her son was in good form yesterday afternoon and seemed rested.
She described him as "the straightest, most honest person you could meet".
He had been seen a lot of poverty in the city areas where he had worked as a teacher, and that had reinforced his commitment to the underprivileged, she said.
SIPTU said yesterday it would seek a joint trade union initiative to campaign for an end to refuse collection charges.