Killing off Irish Water just one of the aims of protests

Saturday’s water protest was the first real manifestation of an effort to organise on the left of the political spectrum and a seething electorate may grant it some success, writes Michael Clifford.

In the run-up to Saturday’s water charges protest, it was all about the numbers. Whenever representatives advertised the Right2Water event in the media, they were invariably asked how many they expected to turn out.

The subtext was obvious. What size of a protest would signal that the campaign still had a pulse? And, how far down would it be on the transformative protest back in October that brought up to 150,000 onto the streets?