Grim truths at pensioner protest

Stand by your nan!

That was the placard plea of the day thousands descended on the Dáil to demand a fair deal for the elderly after the budget battering meted out to them.

Despite the prominence of a specially made coffin, a grim reaper outfit, and a large tombstone in the crowd, the event was a good-natured affair with its surge of silver energy undampened by the rain.

Though the rally did see a vicious assault on a rather feeble centenarian — the Labour Party. Mention of the fact, from speakers on the truck acting as a stage, that the junior partner in the Cuts Coalition was now 100 years old, yet had abandoned fellow citizens of that age, drew the biggest boos of the day.

The crowd had been warmed-up by singer Paddy Behan but as his booming rendition of ‘When the Saints Go Marching In’ blared out from the sound system, a number of elderly people clasped their hands over their ears and moved away from the giant speakers, before a voice from the stage could be hard saying: “Keep it down Paddy, it’s too loud for some of them.”

Death emerged as a constant motif for the mass gathering as protesters predicted the cuts — unless they were speedily reversed — would mean either an early demise for themselves, or the Government.

An umbrella sporting a funeral directors’ brand name was noticeable in the throng, but it was unclear if this was a deliberate statement of irony, random choice of rain protection, or subtle product placement.

The removal of the bereavement grant and abolition of phone allowances were seized on in particular as acts of cruelty with signs stating: “Michael Noonan: The minister who robbed the dead” and “ET phone home — because I can’t afford to”.

Other placards ranged from the playful with the Pink Floyd inspired: “Taoiseach! Leave OAPs alone!’ to the despairing; “OAPs — Just gas us, it’s cheaper and quicker.”

The crowd was so large that mini protests erupted in some parts — with a man in his 80s standing by the Leinster House gates turning the air as blue as the shirts of the Fine Gael forebears he was railing against as he kept shouting: “Fuckers! They’re all a bunch of fuckers!”

One woman nearby remarked: “Everything that man says is right — it is just a shame he let himself down with the language.”

It was that kind of odd, peculiarly Irish day when nuns mixed with hard left activists in the crowd, but the throng of people was held together by the twin binds of fear of what would happen next if they did not make a stand now, and a palpable anger that they had been forced into this situation in the first place after all the sacrifices they made for the country during the make-do decades leading up to the brief, ruinous Celtic Tiger party most of them were refused entry to.

Máiréad Hayes, of the Irish Senior Citizens Parliament, which organised the rally, told the crowd: “We want a country where people can live from the cradle to the grave — this is just the start!”

And as the demonstration wound down, some on the streets turned to the Dáil and chanted: “We want to see the criminals!” And as a handful of TDs sheepishly emerged from main door of Leinster House — but safely away from the wrath of the elderly protesters on the other side of the security gates and police line — the roar went up: “Shame! Shame! Shame!” as the mass of silver indignation surged to the steel railings.

At the same moment a group of teenagers were meekly walking through a side entrance to begin a tour of the parliament complex.

The contrast was stark: the passivity of a generation staring into forced emigration and mass youth unemployment in a country where even the IMF warns the jobless rate is really 23%, and the anger of the elderly who insist they will not be swept into the social gutter without a fight.

Nan rage is on the rise.