by Our Foreign Desk

MORE than 80,000 people took to the streets of Dublin at the weekend to march against EU-imposed water charges.

The huge demonstration was the fifth major protest against charges being levied by Irish Water, which began in April, and was organised by umbrella campaign group Right2Water.

Charging people for water was a condition of the 2010 “bailout” agreement imposed on Ireland by the “troika” — EU, IMF and European Central Bank — that has since presided over the cuts and privatisations in Greece.

Marchers carried banners reading: “It’s your water, it’s our water. It’s not their water to sell” and “Water is a human right.”

Irish Congress of Trade Unions president John Douglas said the water bills were “just the tip of the austerity iceberg.

“Ireland is one of the most unequal countries in the developed world, where hundreds of thousands of us struggle to get by.”

Civil and Public Services Union activist Dee Quinlan said the demo was “to show that we will no longer pay for the sins of the property speculators, top-tier bankers, centre-right politicians and their pursuit of the policies of austerity.

“If we accept these charges, we are then in acceptance of the inevitable privatisation of water in this country.

“If the end goal of this unfair policy is not privatisation, then why is our government stubbornly refusing to hold a referendum to enshrine ownership of our water services in the hands of the public?”

Right2Water co-ordinator Brendan Ogle, an official with British and Irish trade union Unite, declared: “First we need to abolish water charges and ensure public ownership of our water in perpetuity.

“And then we need to change the type of society we live in to one based on equality, fairness and solidarity rather than one based on greed and exploitation.”