THE DONEGAL group which took part in protests outside the Ard Fheis of the Labour Party in Galway yesterday has issued a strong condemnation of a small group of protestors who attacked gardai.
Officers were forced to use pepper stray after several dozen protestors broke through garda ranks.
The Labour Party was forced to cancel a number of fringe meetings and workshops yesterday as a result of the protests.
Today the PRO for Donegal Action Against Austerity Ryan Stewart said he wanted to make it clear that the group opposed violence.
“Just to be perfectly clear, myself, nor others involved in Donegal Action Against Austerity, condone any form of violent protest. As stated previously, everyone has a right to protest, and the democratic rights of people do not end at the ballot box,”
“Those elected to serve the people must do so in the interests of the people who put them there, not on behalf of their parties.
“We as citizens have a duty to call our government to order when it is clear that they are serving in the correct capacity whenever this happens, not just at election time, and one year on from the last election, it is clear that this government have blatantly lied to the people, and consistently gone back on their promises from the last election, and hindsight is 20:20.”
Mr Stewart added: “If people had the option again, I doubt very much if this government would have the same majority. Public anger is palpable, but attacks on the Gardai are cannot be justified.”
Hours after the protest disrupted his party conference Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore argued the Government acts only in the public interest.
The Labour leader defended Government austerity measures, which have resulted in tax hikes and cuts to the welfare and education system.
“There is one thing about the Labour Party and this Government that nobody can deny: whatever decisions we make are made in the public interest and no other,” said Mr Gilmore.
In his keynote speech at the party’s centenary-marking conference, he said the Government had pulled the economy back from the brink and prevented Ireland from becoming a “banana republic”.
During the protest several hundred people broke through security lines to picket the Bailey Allen building at NUI Galway, where the conference was being held.
They carried a coffin draped in the Irish flag as a battering ram, chanting: “They say cut back, we say fight back.”
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