Loudspeakers, drums, leaflets and placards greet TDs
As the nation's public representatives arrived fresh from their summer recess they were greeted with as wide an assortment of protests as Kildare Street has likely ever seen in one day.
No less than eight separate issues were being loudly and passionately addressed by hundreds of protesters armed with loudspeakers, drums, leaflets and angry placards.
Everything from bin taxes to constitutional rights were on the agenda of those who took to the streets in the rain.
Up bright and early and first to arrive were a handful of anti-war protesters with placards referring to war planes at Shannon. Meanwhile, Cork's Andrew Moynihan cut a lone figure as he began his second hunger strike seeking justice for the violent death of his son Adrian outside a Cork nightclub over two years ago.
Just before lunch, 50 drum-banging schoolchildren from Drogheda arrived demanding a new school. The Fatima School Action Group described conditions at their school in Drogheda as "Dickensian" and should have been replaced three years ago.
Also angry at Education Minister Noel Dempsey was a child abuse survivor, who maintained he was owed money by the minister, while the usual gaggle of omnipresent Leinster House picketers included one who reckoned Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy should cough up thousands for some personal grievance.
At lunchtime, more than 500 non-national parents in danger of being deported along with their Irish-born children loudly filled the street, buggies in tow. The parents, headed up by Residents Against Racism, handed over a letter addressed to Justice Minister Michael McDowell demanding a moratorium on the deportation of Irish-born children. But with the Dáil still sitting minus Joe Higgins the anti-bin tax protesters made the largest noise as dusk fell over the corridors of power.
A debate over the jailing of Mr Higgins was overruled during standing orders, but nothing was stopping those outside expressing their views.
To the tune of Chris de Burgh's Don't Pay the Ferry Man they sang "Don't pay the wheelie bins, never let them tax you twice". Whatever about the war waged inside the Oireachtas, there was little doubt who won the battle on the streets.
