"Mary Harney what's the score? One law for the rich, one law for the poor." That was the chant as 500 people staged a sit-down outside Leinster House yesterday in protest at further proposed cuts in community employment.
It was clear from the banners that most of the demonstrators were community employment scheme participants. Most came from Dublin working-class communities but there were people such as Mr Joe Doherty from Clonmany on the Inishowen peninsula. Joe, a retired steel-fixer, was there on behalf of the Donegal branch of the "Mayday" coalition of community groups.
There were contingents from groups such as Women's Aid and Gingerbread, which help women, lone parents and families in crisis across the traditional class divides. The Gingerbread spokeswoman, Ms Carmel ClarkeMud rack, said its CE scheme faced closure before the end of the year.
Already the CE scheme, which provides information, counselling and administrative supports to Gingerbread's various services has been halved.
The protest, which began with a march from the Garden of Remembrance led by a Samba band and ended in a public meeting outside the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, was organised by the Scheme Workers Alliance.
The alliance press officer, Mr Joe Carolan, said they would be back on Saturday week with another protest if the proposed cutbacks were not reversed.
The Tanaiste Ms Harney later insisted there would be no changes in the numbers on the programme this year, and that nobody on the programme now would lose out.
The Labour spokesman on enterprise, trade and employment, Mr Pat Rabbitte, the only TD to address the rally, accused Ms Harney of attempting to introduce the cuts "by stealth" and doing tremendous damage in the process to social partnership, vulnerable local communities and local organisations.
He also said proposals to exclude people under 25 from CE schemes was in conflict with Section 8 of the 1998 Employment Equality Act. This "specifically states that an employer shall not discriminate against an employee or prospective employee `in relation to training or experience for, or in relation to, employment'."
The ATGWU national secretary for Ireland, Mr Mick O'Reilly, accused Ms Harney of wanting to "push" people off schemes and into low paid jobs.
Later Ms Harney issued a statement regretting that "there has been so much heat and so little light about the restructuring of the CE programme". She said her department had had extensive consultation with the social partners on the restructuring proposals "and obviously intend to consult further on phasing in of reductions at forthcoming meetings in the partnership process".
