Lagan Brick workers from Cavan stepped up their campaign over the Lagan Group’s failure to pay established redundancy terms by occupying their headquarters at Lagan house on the 4^th April. More than 35 Lagan Brick workers and their supporters entered the company’s offices at Lagan House, Clarendon Road following a refusal by the company to accept a letter requesting its participation in negotiations.  Workers at the Lagan Brick manufacturing plant in Kingscourt were informed it was closing only hours before it ceased operation on Friday, 15th December.

Thousands of people marched from Eyre Square in Galway to the Labour Party conference at NUIG on Saturday. People had travelled from all over the country to show their opposition to the household tax and other attacks on people’s living standards. The story that made the evening news however, was one of the several hundred strong breakaway protest that reached the doors of the conference centre.

Saturdays Household tax demonstration in Galway at the Labour Party conference saw angry scenes after Garda attempted to keep the protesters out of sight and sound from the conference venue. Students who were being kept off their own campus were particularly annoyed and led a push against the Garda barriers during which several of them were attacked with pepper spray. They did however succeed in removing the barriers with the result that around 1,000 of the 4,000 or so Household tax demonstrators were able to march to the door of the conference center to protest in full sight of the Labour party delegates inside.

A number of WSM members were present at the protest, either with their various local Household tax delegations or with FEE, the student group. One of them was among the people pepper sprayed. We asked them to give us their accounts of what happened on the day.

This year marked the 96th anniversary of the Easter Rising traditionally a time when republicans across this island come out to remember the sacrifice of fallen comrades and renew their ideals set in stone in the 1916 proclamation. It is also a time when rival republican groups set out there stall in a show of strength and support; but what is noticeable in so-called republican heartlands is a decline in overall attendance and of the wearing of the Easter lily and houses flying the tri-colour.