Letter sent by young man to RTE Prime Time

Dear Sir/Madam,

This is the first time I have ever felt compelled to register a complaint about the programming on RTÉ. As a young person in my final year of college, the level of national debt in Ireland will affect my life, the lives of my friends and the lives of my generation for many years to come. It is therefore right that RTÉ cover developments at EU level that could potentially alter our debt situation for the better. I do not feel however that your broadcast of Prime Time on January 22nd provided adequate coverage of domestic developments around this issue and I wish to formally register this complaint.

I believe as a public service broadcaster you have done the public a disservice in how this programme's segment presented the EU-level negotiations on banking debt. This disservice arises from the conspicuous absence of a significant and highly relevant legal case that was initiated in the High Court that same day. Businessman David Hall, with former Labour Attorney General John Rogers acting as his senior counsel, have mounted a constitutional challenge against the promissory note payments. The outcome of this case, which proceeds for the remainder of this week, could have profound implications for the government if, say, the court upheld Mr Hall's case. Given the enormous size of the debt incurred from the promissory notes, this legal case could end up being one of the most significant in Irish history.

But there wasn't so much as a passing reference to this case on the programme. I find this very odd. The segment was devoted purely to assessing Ireland's levels of national debt, before proceeding to a debate between Brian Hayes TD and Michael McGrath TD, moderated by Miriam O'Callaghan. No mention at all of the legal challenge launched by David Hall. I believe that by omitting such a reference, this programme did not conform to Section 39 (1) (b) of the Broadcasting Act 2009, in that it was not "fair to all interests concerned".

The segment did not adequately reflect the range of issues at stake nor the range of views available on the promissory note issue. Whilst Deputies Hayes & McGrath both discussed the impact of EU negotiations around the promissory note debt, they only discussed details such as the timeframe and interest rate by which the promissory notes were paid. They did not address the view held by large numbers of the public, as well as many reputable commentators, that the promissory note payments should be cancelled, or at least written down. I share such views and I feel as a stakeholder in this issue, that Prime Time should have made a greater effort to have as broad a range of views reflected as possible.

Having two politicians from two political parties with similar policy positions on this issue, did not provide sufficient scope for an informed and wide-ranging debate on this issue. It should have been possible for Ms O'Callaghan to present them a question relating to the possibility of a write-down to the cost of the promissory notes. What's even more striking by its absence is how O'Callaghan made no reference to the legal challenge against the promissory notes. Surely the potential implications of that development would have been a topical, interesting question for O'Callaghan to ask of these public representatives? Do the public not have a right to be informed of that development when it is so relevant to the issue being discussed? Is a sure-footed challenge to the legal basis of this controversial fiscal policy not central to these developments? Isn't this newsworthy? Or am I missing something?

I am humbly aware of the pressure the production team behind Prime Time must be under. They only have so much time to devote to each segment in a programme. They must find a cogent way to frame their coverage of a news story; this requires precision and sometimes, omission of wider issues. I understand and appreciate this. But given how this segment was based on information they'd only received that day, there would have been sufficient time to also prepare a report on the High Court challenge. Given that representatives of political parties were present it would have been possible and diligent to seek their response to such a challenge.

Are there perhaps regulations that forbid or discourage the discussion of ongoing court cases? If so, I was unaware of this and would appreciate clarity on the matter. But surely it would have been relevant and possible to simply inform viewers that in tandem with these EU-level negotiations, there was also a legal challenge at home? Would that not have been more compelling as well as more informative?

By not reflecting the range of developments (on the very day of broadcast) or viewpoints on this issue, the coverage was not fair to all interests involved. The citizens of this country have been shut out from all these hugely influential financial decisions. Since we are the ones who live with the consequences, are we not at the least entitled to accurate information and probing journalism about how these decisions are made?

Prime Time could rectify this shortcoming in my view by devoting a future episode to the legal challenge. They could also commit to airing a wider range of views on this issue to more adequately reflect public & expert opinion. To represent the case against the promissory notes they could invite onto the air a reputable commentator who believes in this case, or someone involved in the legal challenge, or someone from the campaign group "Anglo: Not Our Debt" who campaign specifically on this issue: http://www.notourdebt.ie

Public service broadcasters have an obligation to foster a well-informed citizenry. The broader and fundamental issues around this central issue in current affairs must be more thoroughly explored in the future.

Regards,
Jonathan Victory

BALLYHEA & CHARLEVILLE BANK BAILOUT PROTEST WEEK 100

On January 27th 2013 we will mark a milestone we never wished to see, week 100 of the Ballyhea & Charleville bank bailout protest. Every week since March 6th 2011, sometimes several times a week (with the exception of Christmas week 2011, when we gave ourselves a well-earned rest), we have marched in protest against the immoral and unjust imposition of private bank debt on the shoulders of the Irish people. 

The figures are huge, highlighted lately in an illuminating article by UNITE economist Michael Taft in thejournal.ie. According to Eurostat, the EU Commission’s data agency, the cost of the bank bailout so far from Ireland’s general government budget has been €41bn. We have 0.9% of the EU population, our economy is 1.2% of the EU GDP, yet according to the official Eurostat figures we’ve paid 42% of the total cost (so far) of the European banking crisis. 

It’s critical to remember here also that Eurostat does NOT include the €21bn taken from our National Pension Reserve Fund nor the potential remaining exposure to €27bn of NAMA bonds which are guaranteed by the State, nor yet the interest lost on the Pension funds, nor the interest being paid on the borrowings, nor the ‘coupons’ being paid on the bank bonds which are all still being paid in full; when all that is taken into account, we’re off the charts. 

It’s not just about the numbers, however, eye-watering as they are; it’s about the principle. As a nation we’re being robbed, we’re being beggared, we’re being enslaved to pay debts that are not ours, were never ours, will never rightfully be ours. As Lincoln said, that which is morally wrong can never be made politically right. By the same token, that which is legal isn't always legitimate.

Private Irish banks issued bonds to private banks in other jurisdictions, for-profit deals made between consenting adults. Blinded by greed, those foreign banks and financial institutions didn’t see the bubble their hundreds of billions were creating in this tiny economy, they abdicated the most basic responsibility of any for-profit lender – they didn’t do a proper check to see where the money was going, whether it could be repaid. Inevitably, the bubble burst. In the early years of the boom those foreign banks and financial institutions were more than happy to take their profits; they must also take their losses. 

At the end of February 2011 we elected a new government, one which promised to tackle head-on this problem, one which promised burden-sharing. We know now what they meant. Their stated intention is that the bank debt burden will be shared NOT with the banks, but with future generations of the people of this country. There will not be one cent of debt writedown, just an extension of term, maybe an improvement in conditions.

Unless we stand and fight now, that will be our legacy to our children, our legacy even to our children’s children if this government succeeds in extending the payment to several decades, again as is their stated aim. This is our problem but rather than face it, this government plans to take out loans to be repaid by future generations. Are you happy with this? 

To mark week 100 of our protest we are trying to build a national coalition, a coming together of every strand of Irish society – left, right, centre, new Irish and established, male and female, young and old – to resist this enslavement. 

On Saturday January 26th, 8pm at the Charleville Park Hotel, we have an open free meeting at which will speak Michael Taft (referenced above), Constantin Gurdgiev, Luke Ming Flanagan, Declan Ganley, many others too numerous to mention. 

On Sunday January 27th, starting in Ballyhea at 11.30am, the week 100 protest march, continued at 12.30pm in Charleville. Join us. It is the Troika’s ambition that when they finally leave here they will leave behind this legacy of bank debt, reparations to be paid for decades by us, the people, for a war we never fought. In the ‘Ballyhea Says No’ campaign it is our ambition that they will leave with what they came with – nothing. 

The final few lines from Pearse’s ‘The Rebel’:

And I say to my people’s masters: Beware,

Beware of the thing that is coming, beware of the risen people,

Who shall take what ye would not give.

Did ye think to conquer the people,

Or that Law is stronger than life and than men’s desire to be free?

We will try it out with you, ye that have harried and held,

Ye that have bullied and bribed,

Tyrants, hypocrites, liars!

Regards, Diarmuid O'Flynn.

DEBUNKING THE GOVERNMENT PROMISSORY NOTE LIES

 Any of you who may be tempted to believe the fiction being peddled in the last few days from the government spokespeople on the Promissory Notes of 2012, please read this extract from the report from the Comptroller and Auditor General's office on the Gross Government Debt, Item 2.11, page 20:

The level of Government bonds in issue increased in March 2012 when bonds were issued to meet a promissory note payment of €3.06 billion due to Irish Bank Resolution Corporation Limited (IBRC). The bonds issued will mature in 2025 and have an annual interest rate of 5.4%. As the market value of the bonds at the time was just over €88 per €100 nominal, the State issued bonds with a nominal value of €3.46 billion in order to meet the payment. The yield on the bonds and, therefore, the effective interest rate on the repayment of €3.06 billion, is just over 6.8%.

Contrary to the outright lies being told by various Ministers, not alone was the 2012 Promissory Note paid in full to the Central Bank of Ireland, who then destroyed the €3.1bn, it actually cost us as a nation €400,000,000 more than it needed to and we’ll be paying more interest than we needed to, right up to 2025.

Read the C&AG paragraph above; because the 'market value' of the bonds were only €88 per €100 'nominal' at the time, the State (that's us, people) issued bonds of €3.46bn to get their hands on the necessary €3.06bn to give to the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation - Anglo - which Anglo then gave to the Central Bank, which then - under orders from the ECB - destroyed that money. That's the extra €400 million in the amount borrowed.

Compounding the additional cost of what was done last March, and again referring to the above, the effective interest rate on the €3.06bn is just over 6.8%; we could have got that money from the ECB emergency fund at around 3%. So, not alone did we pay an extra €400,000,000 to get the money, we are paying an additional 3.8% per annum on the €3.06bn - that's an additional €116,000,000 per annum until 2025, when that bond is due to mature (the total annual interest on just that one bond is 6.8% of €3.06bn = €208,080,000).

That, my friends, was Michael Noonan's vaunted 'deal', that's what it cost. As stated in black-and-white above, the Promissory Note WAS paid; to give the appearance of a 'deal' however Michael went to a new and far more expensive source for the money, issued a sovereign bond that will NOT be paid by this government or even by this generation but now forms part of the growing debt legacy we will leave our children.

To give the appearance of having done a 'deal' Michael and Enda engaged in their new favourite sport, 'financial engineering'. The only 'deal', however, was on how they got the money; the P Note WAS paid, on time and in full, the €3.06bn WAS destroyed, taken out of circulation, but at much greater cost to us, the people.

Now, they're planning to do the same again. The lies, the lies, the lies, the ongoing betrayal of the people at so many levels - it is almost beyond words.

Regards,

Diarmuid O'Flynn.

SELLING THE SOUL OF A NATION

In all the calculations on the cost to Ireland of the bank bailout, one element is always overlooked - what price a nation's soul?

I could dazzle you with numbers at this stage, the €115bn in bonds that our failed banks have paid out since the ill-advised blanket bank guarantee of September 2008 (and let’s not bother here with the equally ill-advised circumstances in which that guarantee was given), the €69.7bn we have pumped into our banks (including the oft overlooked €5.5bn NAMA donation), which translates to over €15,200 of debt for every resident of this state –  man, woman and child.

I could point to the ironic symmetry that’s developing:First, the €12.4bn in austerity budget cuts/taxes over the years 2012/13/14/15 (3.8+3.5+3.1+2), the €12.4bn total in Promissory Notes over the same period (3.1x4) – for whose benefit all this austerity? Second, the €67.5bn in loans promised by the Troika of IMF/EU/ECB under the Memorandum of Enslavement of November 2010, against the above-mentioned €69.7bn we’ve given to the banks – who bailed out who?

I could tell you about the lies, the massaging of numbers to disguise just how bad things are in Ireland today, the additional off-balance-sheet NAMA and IBRC government debt that runs into the tens of billions, the use of the multinational-skewed GDP figure as opposed to the far more pertinent - and far smaller - GNP, when calculating our true debt situation.

Then you look at the unemployment figures, the notional official number of just under 15%, the real number of over 17% when the various ‘schemes’ are taken into account.

Finally, the emigration numbers, the 7,000 who left this country every month for the last 12 months, taking their own pain with them but also, leaving great pain behind - gaps in homes, gaps in parishes, gaps in entire generations. 

All these thing we can measure and quantify and already, looking at the numbers above, you must wonder – given that we still don’t have a functioning banking system, given also that so many of those at the top within that banking system who got us into this mess are still there and still drawing massive salaries, who in God’s name thinks the bank bailout has been worth all of that?

This is about more than numbers, however. There is that one element I mentioned above, an element always overlooked, an element unquantifiable. What price our freedom, what price our independence, what price the soul of a nation?

We have swapped one Empire for another, one form of serfdom for another. What was being done from Dublin Castle is now being done from Leinster House, a new set of Agents collecting tithes for our new Masters. This government has repeated ad nauseum its ambition to say goodbye to the Troika but that same Troika will leave with a smile on its face. Why? Because they will have achieved what they came to achieve (in particular the EU/ECB duo)  – they have made us a nation of debt slaves.

Fianna Fáil and the Green Party, now Fine Gael and Labour, they have signed away our soul, they have become the new Overseers, collecting and forwarding the 30 pieces of silver.

What have we done? What cost to a nation’s reputation? The Fighting Irish? The Proud Irish? The Indomitable Irish? I was at a an international debt conference in Brussels last week  with nearly 20 countries represented – when I outlined the numbers above there was almost universal bemusement that a government would accept such abasement of its own people.

We are not a meek people, we are not a weak people. As evidenced by the fact that earlier this year nearly a million homeowners willingly and voluntarily criminalised themselves by refusing to register for the Household Charge, evidenced further by the number of protests of various kinds across the nation, there is massive and growing anger. Rather than belittling and berating those who thus take a stand this government would be well advised to be aware of that anger, and to beware. A reckoning is coming.

This is week 92 of the Ballyhea and Charleville protest against that bank bailout – it’s time you all joined us. Every week we march, in Charleville this Sunday (Library Plaza 11.30am). We refuse to become debt slaves, paying for loans we never took out, loans from which we never benefited. We are not looking for better terms and conditions on those loans, we want to shatter the shackles of serfdom, beginning with the weakest link, the Promissory Notes – burn them, now. Time to reclaim our soul my friends, time to reclaim our ancient fighting spirit.

Regards, Diarmuid O'Flynn

GHOSTS

The men who have led Ireland for twenty-five years have done evil, and they are bankrupt. They are bankrupt in policy, bankrupt in credit, bankrupt now even in words. They have nothing to propose to Ireland, no way of wisdom, no counsel of courage. When they speak they speak only untruth and blasphemy. Their utterances are no longer the utterances of men. They are the mumblings and the gibberings of lost souls. A quote from the writings of P.H. Pearse that has resonance still.

With one greedy grasping fist this government  - as did the last - takes from the young, the old, the needy, the most vulnerable, from those of us huddled in the middle; with the other feeble hand it feeds the greed of our new banking masters, the ECB. The men who have led Ireland have done evil, and they are bankrupt.

Then, with their mumblings and their gibberish, its ministers, party members and media apologists try to justify the utterly unjustifiable, impoverishing their own people while enriching foreign financial investors and institutions through the payment of failed private bank bonds. They are bankrupt in policy, bankrupt in credit, bankrupt now even in words. 

Terrorised and intimidated by the threats – spoken and unspoken – of those cold new masters, our leaders have poured tens of billions of our money into the banks to pay failed bonds. They have nothing to propose to Ireland, no way of wisdom, no counsel of courage.

They then negotiate ‘deals’ which will see our children and our children’s children pay reparations for decades for that bank debt, reparations for a war we never fought, and they will present this as triumph. When they speak they speak only untruth and blasphemy, their utterances are no longer the utterances of men.

Our leaders have been cowed, they have been bullied, they have been beaten, they have been subjugated, supplicants reduced to pleading and begging. They have accepted on our behalf a debt that isn’t ours, was never ours, will never BE ours. 

We must now again arise, we the people. Not in arms, not in blood, but in anger nevertheless. We’re told that the ECB won’t even talk to us, never mind consider restoring the tens of billions forced from us. The reason? The same reason they considered themselves able to inflict this burden on us in the first place – we’re a small nation. Well yes, we are, but when it comes to toppling empires, we have a bit of history.

To finish, another quote from the same work of Pearse: Ghosts are troublesome things in a house or in a family, as we knew even before Ibsen taught us. There is only one way to appease a ghost. You must do the thing it asks you. The ghosts of a nation sometimes ask very big things; and they must be appeased, whatever the cost.

This Sunday the Ballyhea protest will take place in Charleville, meeting as per usual at the Library Plaza at 11.30am, week 86. The following Saturday, however, October 27^th, we’re again taking our protest on the road, heading up west on this occasion. The itinerary outline is as follows:

Charleville:  7.45am, meet at the Library Plaza;

Ennis:        9.15am, meet O’Connell Monument, march O’Connell St;

Galway:      10.45am, meet Bus Station cnr of Eyre Sq, march around the square;

Castlebar:   12.45pm, meet Military barracks just off main roundabout, march Main St;

Sligo:        2.30pm, meet at the end of O'Connell St, march to GPO for 3pm protest;

Donegal town: 4.45pm, meet at the Lidl supermarket carpark, march to The Diamond.

We would appreciate local organisers/support in each of those locations. Contact us on

Twitter - @ballyhea14;

Facebook – Ballyhea bondholder bailout protest;

Blogs – http://bondwatchireland.blogspot.com; http://thechatteringmagpie14.blogspot.com

Regards, Diarmuid O'Flynn.

YOUR €15,000 GIFT

Many times through the last 83 weeks of our protest in Ballyhea and Charleville we've had people tell us that they don’t see what we’re protesting about, that unless the government is actually taking money directly from their pockets, as in the controversial Household Charge, they won’t protest. But the government IS taking money from their pockets.

Here’s how it works. If you went through your bank accounts to discover that money is being taken from your various accounts every week without your permission and with no indication as to where it was going, how would you react? If you went to your bank manager to investigate and discovered that without ever being either asked or told, the bank had slapped an extra loan of €15,000 not just on you but on every single member of your household, and that you were now paying back this extra ‘loan’ with interest through your various different accounts – a few bob taken here, another few bob taken there, all under different headings – how would you react? Last Monday, for example, AIB paid an unsecured unguaranteed bond of €1bn - that's our money, money we sank into AIB over the last couple of years, over €200 for every man, woman and child in the country for one bond in one day.

Denise O'Toole's courageous one-woman stand on Monday last in Sligo

If you delved further to discover that it wasn’t just in your case this subterfuge was happening, that your local bank manager was settling further disputed debt by taking out interest-only loans at inflated rates in the names of your children, and of your children’s children, the principal to be paid a decade hence, another decade hence, yet another decade hence, spread over the next 40 years, debt that is NOT yours but debt that has now been passed on to future generations of your family, how would you react? Because again, this is EXACTLY what was done with the 2012 Promissory Note and what’s being planned for all the future Notes.

We are being robbed blind by the ECB, and I mean blind – we’re not being told. They have intimidated our own government – this one and the last – into acceding to their policy of placing banks and other financial institutions above people, they have fooled our major mainstream media into cheerleading that same plan. 

Fear and fog have been their major propaganda weapons. Fear, in moving the question on a level from where it should be. Instead of questioning the morality, the ethics, the legitimacy, even the practicality, of what they’re doing, they have succeeded with both the media and with our government in moving the question on a level – what will happen to us if we DON’T do as they demand? Fog, the truth lost in the mist of lies, half-lies and semi-truths we’re being fed to disguise what’s happening. 

Recent examples? The so-called 2012 Promissory Note deal that transformed a very arguable €3.06bn loan ‘guarantee’, for which we could have borrowed that same €3.06bn from one of the ECB emergency funds at about 3% while we continued to argue over it, into a very solid Sovereign debt for which we had to actually borrow €3.46bn on the markets – that’s an extra €400,000,000 my friends – and on which we’re paying over 5% per annum until our kids have to pay the full amount of that bond when it ‘matures’ in 2025.

You want another example? How about the ‘seismic shift’ announced after the EuroZone leaders’ summit last June, Enda’s and Eamon’s blather, all the money the various national newspapers then trumpeted we were going to get as a result; where is that seismic shift now? As Constantin Gurdgiev put it so succinctly on the Vincent Browne Tonight show on TV3 during the week, it’s merely a ripple in a bath-tub.

We’re told to gird ourselves for the cuts and taxes coming up in Budget 2013, that all the low-lying fruit has been picked. What fruit is more low-lying than the salaries, expenses and pensions of our politicians themselves? What fruit is more low-lying than their own numbers and the numbers of similarly overpaid representatives on our 34 local authorities (29 county councils – Dublin with three, Tipperary with two – and five city councils)? 34 local authorities to deal with a population of 4.58m? What fruit is more low-lying than the number of salaries of the various advisers in the various government departments? God above, what fruit is more low-lying than the pensions we pay to our ex-politicians? 

Has the Troika touched any of that? No. Why not? Because these people are now the reincarnation of the old British Empire Agents, they are our new overseers delivering to us the list of demands from our new Masters, the ECB/EU.

For those who would succumb to the propaganda of fear, I have one word – Iceland. The people of Iceland, due to the courage and integrity of their President who – for the first time in Iceland’s history – refused to sign the legislation that would have enslaved them for generations to bail out their banks as we’re being enslaved now, were given a choice, a referendum. Just as we’re being now threatened they  were threatened by their own media with the prospect of Armageddon if they rejected the ‘agreement’. They did reject it, and only a couple of years later they are thriving.

Protest. March with us. This is now week 84, we’re In Ballyhea this Sunday October 7^th 2012 at 11.30am, meeting at the church carpark. Join us.

Regards, Diarmuid O’Flynn.

THE AIB BILLION-EURO BOND

If – like me – you did the Lotto this week you're obviously hoping for a big win but you'd settle for any of the consolation prizes. This coming Monday, however, AIB will pay an unsecured unguaranteed billion-euro bond – that’s the equivalent of winning every Lotto every week (that’s two a week of €2m each) every year for almost the next five years, 500 consecutive Lotto wins. 
 

You didn’t know? How could you. As part of the policy of playing down the negative our national media is continuing to deliberately ignore ALL bank bond payments, thus you don’t know either that this billion will make it €18bn that our banks have paid in bonds so far this year; you don’t know there’s still another €2bn to go, and yet another €17bn next year.

You will know of course that Budget 2013 is being planned at the moment, the cuts/taxes of €3.5bn mandated by the ECB/EU/IMF troika. 

If you're young, elderly, sick, poor, weak, you'll be worried about what further cuts/extra costs can be applied to education, home help, hospital care, universal charges, allowances. If you're one of the masses, in employment or out you're worried how you're going to cope next year.

If you're a politician, either national or local, if you're one of the many advisers to one of those politicians, if you're a top civil servant, if you're a judge, if you're a top administrator with any of our many local authorities, you're not worried, not in the least.

You know that eventhough you should be up there at or near the top of the list in any objective summary of overpayments and overstaffing, that eventhough you should be among the first to feel the blade in any cost-cutting measure, you're safe. Why? Because those who give the orders in the new European Empire are not about to cut those whom they rely on to carry out those orders.

It has taken less than a century but we’ve managed to exchange one set of Masters for another, and one set of Overseers for another. These new Overseers have their lists, the targets that are set for us by our new Masters, they have their whips, which they’ll use to impose those targets on us; as reward for all that they are on extra rations, they are kept sweet.

Those who should be fighting our cause have abandoned us. The union leadership? They too are bought off. Most of them tied to top civil service salary scales, they too are insulated from all the cuts. The media? They have surrendered their independence, regurgitate undigested all government claims, play down any protest, any unrest, even in Europe – the masses must be kept in the dark. They ignore the reality of what’s happening, the insanity of this bank bailout and what it’s doing to Ireland.

A few of us ARE protesting, however, and have been doing so for over 82 weeks now. To mark the payment of that billion-euro AIB bond this Monday, the Ballyhea & Charleville bank bailout protest group are organising two events.

This Sunday, and simultaneously with our march at home (it’s in Charleville this week), we’ll be in Dublin again, meeting at the Garden of Remembrance at 11.30am then marching to Croke Park at noon. Hopefully the hurling supporters of both Galway and Kilkenny who offered encouragement and support from the footpaths the last time will fall in with us on this occasion.

On Monday we’re calling for people nationwide to protest nationwide, to make up a few simple signs proclaiming the fact that this bank on this day is paying €1bn of our money to mystery bondholders, go to their local AIB branch at noon, and mark this occasion. It may be for only a few minutes, it may be only a few of you, but this should be done. For Whom The Bell Tolls, that's what we're calling it, the noonday bells.

I know that to many of you, public protest is alien - to most of us on the Ballyhea protest that is the case; to many more of you, it’s futile. Believe me though when I say, in some circumstances, in circumstances such as this where the people have been abandoned by all those who are supposed to represent them, public protest is the ONLY way.

Regards, Diarmuid O'Flynn.