60,000 march against education cuts in Dublin

A massive demonstration against education cuts, organised by the teachers' unions, saw over 60,000 teachers, parents and students take to the streets of Dublin on Saturday 6 December.

Paul Murphy, Socialist Party, Ireland

Around 100,000 have now demonstrated around the country to oppose attacks on education. There is widespread anger against the cutbacks which will result in Ireland having the highest pupil/teacher ratio in Europe and a reduction in the quality of education.

5,000 Socialist Party (CWI Ireland) leaflets were distributed, over 250 papers were sold and a number of people indicated they were interested in joining the party. Socialist Youth organised a group of secondary school students on the protest and met many others who were interested in being involved in a school students' campaign against the cuts.

We argued that the demonstration was an important step that must be followed up by building a strong campaign. We advocated the establishment of local action groups of students, parents and teachers to resist the cuts. We also called for the trade union movement to organise a national work stoppage to defeat all the budget cuts.

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In The Socialist 10 December 2008:

Stop job cuts