Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

Last Thursday evening, five anti-water charges activists were ordered to be incarcerated by a High Court judge for protesting against the installation of water meters not wanted by the overwhelming majority in this country. For the record, the judge discounted all suggestions of bad behaviour and jailed them solely on the evidence they had contravened and come inside a 20 m exclusion zone around meter installing. This was not based on a law passed in the House but on an injunction sought by GMC Sierra, a company owned by the richest man in Ireland, Denis O'Brien, who is a media magnate in this country.

These jailings follow hot on the heels of outrageous dawn raids on 23 people arrested in Tallaght last week. How far is the Fine Gael and Labour Party Government willing to go in its vain attempt to break the mass movement against the water charges? Just how isolated the Government is from the lives of ordinary people was graphically demonstrated last weekend at the Fine Gael conference in Castlebar when the Taoiseach had to surround himself with not one but two rings of steel, 10 ft. high fences and a phalanx of gardaí and security.

See this speech in context