Tara campaign to give away money outside Government offices

Tara campaigners are to give money away to members of the public at noon tomorrow, outside the new Department of Finance offices on Baggot Street.

The gesture is being done to protest the Government's adherence to the National Development Plan, and the M3 motorway, despite the economic downturn.

Dressed as 'fat-cats', demonstrators will give passing members of the building trade €1 each. However, employees in the medical or educational fields will be given only 20 cents. Homeless people will not be given anything.

This is to symbolise what campaigners claim is an imbalance in Government priorities, where support for builders is higher than any other area of Irish society.

The action is being taken in response to Bertie Ahern's opinion piece in yesterday's Sunday Independent, calling for Taoiseach Cowen to ignore the financial crisis and proceed with the multi-billion investment in the NDP, and in particular the roads programme and Transport 21.

The takings from the TaraWatch benefit concert tonight at the Arts Club in Upper Fitzwilliam Street, Dublin will fund the giveaway.

Campaign spokesman Vincent Salafia said: "The economic justification for the NDP and the M3 has evaporated, with the economic downturn, and it is economic suicide to carry on as if nothing has happened.

"Fianna Fáil, mindlessly propped up by the Green Party and the Progressive Democrats, have clearly made a lot promises to their supporters in the building trade that they feel cannot be undone, no matter what logic it defies or what damage it does to the economy as a whole.

"We are demanding truly sustainable development, not the corrupted version we are being fed at the moment, that is harming rather than improving society as a whole."