Anti Bin Tax Families Reply To Slur

dublin | bin tax / household tax / water tax | press release

Thursday October 16, 2003 14:17

by families of Anna Doran and Karen Heffernan.

Anti Bin Tax Families Reply to Slur.

This statement is issued on behalf of the families of Anna Doran and Karen Heffernan.

Anti Bin Tax Families Reply to Slur.

This statement is issued on behalf of the families of Anna Doran and Karen Heffernan.

The scandalous media spin into the fact that Anti Bin Tax prisoners Anna Doran and Karen Heffernan householders had applied for a waiver is a scurrilous attempt to discredit the Anti Bin Tax Campaign. Do these people believe if you are working that you have no right to protest over unemployment? That if you have not had a relative in hospital that you cannot protest against health cuts or that you cannot object to cutbacks in education if you do not have any children?

Everyone has the right to protest. Our mothers did not ask to go to jail. They were standing with their neighbours and families in peaceful community protest. It was Dublin City Council, which went to the court and sought to have them put in jail.

Having failed to quell the opposition by jailing residents the political establishment backed up by Tony O’Reilly’s media are now trying to discredit those women and men who made a principled stand to defend the right to effective protest.

The Bin Tax affects everyone. The Bin Service was privatised in thirty-seven Local Authorities after the charge was established there. And in that situation nobody gets a waiver. If the Dublin Councils succeed in crushing the opposition the privatisation of the service, the reintroduction of water charges for other local services will follow.

To the crime of standing by their neighbours and P.A.Y.E. taxpayers our mothers are guilty.

It is the Government of tax evaders and bribe takers and the tax exile Tony O’Reilly who are the real hypocrites.