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DUBLIN : Tens of thousands of angry demonstrators rallied across Ireland on Friday to protest government plans for tough austerity measures, police and reports said.
The protests were called by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) to back its 10-point plan to spread belt-tightening -- ordered to deal with a ballooning gap in public finances -- over the next eight years instead of four.
Rallies took place in Dublin and seven other centres. Unions also threaten a national strike on November 24. In February 120,000 people took to the streets in Dublin in a similar protest before an emergency budget in April.
Congress leader David Begg told RTE state radio that a "more gentle way" was needed instead of the government's plan to narrow the fiscal deficit to three percent by 2013.
The ICTU says proposed cuts are "economic madness", would delay economic recovery and send the country "into a prolonged coma".
Prime Minister Brian Cowen's government plans some four billion euros (5.9 billion dollars) in higher taxes and public spending cuts in a December budget and says Ireland cannot afford to delay debt-reduction.
The government says 1.3 billion euros will have to be cut from the public sector pay bill. Earlier this year the government introduced a pension levy for some 350,000 public servants -- in effect a pay cut of some 7.5 percent.
Cowen said that in a relatively short time Ireland's thriving Celtic Tiger economy with budget surpluses had gone to a contracting economy with unsustainable budget deficits.
"We are now spending more than we earn. Clearly, this cannot continue," he said in advance of the protests.
The employers' body, the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC), criticised the protests, saying a plan to protect jobs was needed and not a demonstration to disrupt jobs by people who already have jobs.
"The real casualties of the economic downturn are the 422,500 people who have lost their jobs or who are underemployed. Old solutions and old-style protests will not make one Irish person better off or their job more secure," said Brendan McGinty, IBEC's director of industrial relations.
- AFP /ls
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