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More than 80,000 people flocked to Dublin city centre today to vent their fury at the water charges.

Water demonstrators gathered at Connolly and Hueston train stations before converging on O’Connell street.

This was the fifth mass gathering organised by the Right2Water campaign, which includes community activists, left-wing politicians and trade unions.

Groups from around the country carried banners, placards and Greek and Irish flags in a protest against austerity measures introduced by the Government and the EU.

Speakers demanded the abolition of water charges and called for the release of the ‘Jobstown 21’, the activists arrested over an incident which saw Tanaiste Joan Burton trapped in a car for more than two hours in South Dublin. The ongoing homelessness crisis was also a major source of anger for protestors.

Socialist TD Joe Higgins said: “Water charges were a new austerity and part of the whole bailout of the banks and bondholders.

“It was fundamentally unjust to hit ordinary people with another bill that would go to up towards of €1,000 a year for families of four or five. It was an austerity burden too far.

“This will be one of the key issues in the next General Election.

“With a huge boycott, continuing water charges can’t survive the next government. Abolition is the demand and behind it is a massive majority.

“So far the campaign is very strong and growing in strength.

“Tens of thousands of people again showing their massive opposition but more importantly 57% of households have boycotted the first bill.

“And if that maintains itself it may even go up for the second bill. This tax is just not acceptable to people.

“So let them tax the superwealthy and the big corporations for a change.

(Image: Collins)

“The most important thing is people power and that’s what’s being shown here.” John Douglas, general secretary of the Mandate trade union, took to the stage and rubbished talk of an economic recovery, except for an elite few.

He added: “We have them on the run.”

Sinn Fein vice president Mary Lou McDonald also took to the platform to chants of “no way, we won’t pay”.

The Dublin TD said the Government had underestimated the strength of opposition to Irish Water .

She added: “Irish Water has been one fiasco after the other.

“Protesters, citizens like you and me, are going nowhere too.

“And this Government thought with their ‘conservation grant’ and their heavy-handed legislation they could purchase half of us and intimidate the other half.

“The fool, the fools, the fools – they have underestimated us at their peril. And we will not tolerate their arrogant, bully boy politics any longer.

“This movement rests, in the first place, on the shoulders of every woman and man, every community that has stood up to be counted, well done – every single one of you.

"And when the next election comes let no one be in any doubt that our demand will be an end to water charges and Irish Water and the beginning of a society based on decency, equality, fairness and full citizenship for every single one of us.

“When Enda Kenny and Joan Burton and the others tell us that is pie in the sky, that can’t be done, well we say to them with one voice – just because you won’t do it, because you don’t have the heart or the gut or the conscience to do it, to do things the right way – don’t imagine we’re all cut from the same cloth.

“Because when we say fairness, when we say a fair recovery, equality, an end to water charges and Irish Water – we mean it and we will deliver on it.”

Jimmy Kelly of the Unite union in Northern Ireland said: “They are few and we are many – and we will win.”

Organisers said between 80,000 and 100,000 people attended the demo.

In a statement Right2Water said: “Water charges have proven a tipping point but the hundreds of thousands who have marched since last October have been marching about much more.

“From cuts in lone parent payments to the homelessness crisis which this summer saw nearly 2,000 adults and over 1,000 children in emergency accommodation in our capital city, it’s clear the economic recovery being trumpeted by the Government is not a people’s recovery.”