BY CIARAN TIERNEY

Protesters at the Occupy Galway camp say they have no intention of leaving Eyre Square as they begin their 130th day of demonstrating against austerity cut-backs and the bailout of the bankers this morning.

Some members of Galway City Council might prefer if they would vanish into thin air, but the committed group of activists who have camped out for over 18 weeks told The Sentinel yesterday that they are not going anywhere.

The activists have had little or no contact with city officials since they began their protest in October, and only learned that the Council intends to take legal action in order to move them on through local media reports last week.

“We have been told by people with a legal background that the Council has no serious grounds to evict us, as we have the right to assemble and the right to protest,” said protester Liam Heffernan yesterday.

The protesters said that Gardai on the beat have been “really brilliant” since they set up the encampment and, apart from the odd exception, even the late night drunks have been supportive of Occupy Galway.
Mr Heffernan said the original point of the encampment, to raise awareness of the unfair bailout of unsecured bondholders, had not gone away.

“This is part of a global movement and I think we are only getting started really,” he said. “We are learning to work together with other Occupy protests throughout the world and we will hold a national assembly here in Galway on March 3.”

Protesters have vehemently denied claims by Cllr Terry O’Flaherty (Independent) that the majority of the protesters go home in the evenings.

“There are six or seven people here every night,” said Tracy Lee, from Mayo. “I tend to go home after spending a week here, because I have a husband. We have guys here who have jobs to go to and you tend not to get a full night’s sleep here, so they do go home on certain nights.

“Even the drunks have been quite nice to us. We tell them to come back and engage with us in the day-time. People know that things are wrong. I would like to hear someone explain to us why we should not be here. I think people are starting to get worried that we are going to end up like Greece.”

For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.