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Dublin’s City Centre was more than a little crowded yesterday when around 120,000 people including teachers, civil servants, police and other public workers gathered to protest against how the Irish Government was dealing with its troubled economy.

Ireland’s Economy has been officially in recession since September last year with unemployment rocketing since. In January, the number of people who claim unemployment benefit rose to 326,000 which is the highest level in a month since records began in 1967. The Republic of Ireland has moved from being the fastest growing economy in Europe to the fastest to fall into recession with economists all over the world concerned about the country’s economic stability with some suggesting that Ireland could be in a worse position than Iceland before the collapse of its banks and financial system.

So why were the Irish protesting in a show of such force? The people of Ireland are angry at the way their government is dealing with the financial crisis. The government plans to impose a pension levy on public sector workers because it says that they are not in a position to meet the public service pay bill while revenue is declining. The levy will cost low to middle income employees from 1,500 and 2,800 euros a year. Irish Prime Minister, Brian Cowen has said the economy will shrink by around 10% by 2010 and warned of total savings of 15 billion euros needed over five years to try to stabilise the Irish government’s finances.

The march was organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) who are furious that workers are now being asked to pay for the economic crisis that they didn’t cause. The ICTU’s main aim is to campaign for a better and fairer way of dealing with the crisis, trying to ensure that the people of Ireland and their interests are looked after not the interests of the wealthy or big businesses. The feeling in Ireland is very anti-government at the moment with a lot of citizen’s facing unemployment and a pension levy, the Irish are getting tired of the way the current government conducts itself.

This action is said to be the first in a number of steps conducted by the ICTU to campaign against the government’s handling of the situation. As the people of Ireland rebel, you have to wonder whether its government will suffer a similar fate to that of Iceland’s or even Latvia’s as only last Thursday, its prime minister was forced to quit as the country struggles to battle recession.