Protesters plan to blockade Tipperary town if key demands are not met - picket at Municipal District

Tipperary town’s March4Tipp protest group plans to blockade the N24 main road leading through the town in early January next year unless their demands are met.

At a ‘silent protest’ held outside the municipal district offices on Monday, up to 60 protestors braved the cold to hold up banners declaring ‘listen to us,’ ‘save our town’, ‘the neglect ends now’ and ‘we need jobs’.

Organiser Padraig Culbert said they would continue to picket County Council meetings until they are heard. “We want to bring it home to the Councillors who are meeting here this morning, that the problems we have discussed, that thousands of people have marched behind, are very real. We want to give them a very visible indicator this morning as they go into the meeting, that we’re going to keep up this campaign and escalate it as far as possible to get these problems solved in the town.”

Car parking charges, business rates, and help for small businesses, remain top of the agenda. “We told a Councillor this morning to get rid of pay parking, because it’s a tax. We know there’s a review of pay parking on this morning so we’re here to put pressure on them to do the right thing.”

Mr Culbert said the Council deserves some praise for carrying out works on the roof of the TIpperary Courthouse. The building was the subject of a legal dispute between the Council and the Courts Services. Both parties had maintained it was the other’s duty to repair the building, meaning the building had fallen into dereliction.

“They’ve patched the hole in the Courthouse roof. But with the credit for doing that, goes the damnation for having left it open for nearly a decade. But they’ve patched it now, so they do appear to be listening to some extent.

“The real key things, about employment locally - we’ve heard noises but we haven’t seen action. We’ve always said from the outset we will not be placated. We know there are local authority elections in May. There will be a lot of warm words between now and then to placate people, and make them feel that things are going to improve. But we’re going to wait until we see them improve, and only then back off.”

While Mr Culbert has not been in communication with the Council management directly, his #march4tipp group maintain they are a protest group, and must maintain a distance from officials so as to be a voice for others in the town.

“We feel the moment you start going into meetings and engaging, you get captured. We’re going to be a voice for the people, and other people can do the talking.”

If their demands are not met, Mr Culbert promises more protests, culminating in blocking the main road into the town early next year.

“We are going to gridlock the N24 in early January, and by that, we mean there will be a tailback to Bansha, and a tailback back to Monard.

We’re stopping the N24 during the school holidays. We haven’t a precise date picked yet, but we have a very exact plan on how to do that legally. But it will have a very dramatic effect on the N24. The symbolism there is that it’s the N24 that goes right up through the Main Street of the town.

“It was approved in 2003 to be bypassed but they just decided not to, but we’re saying they have to. And we’ll blocking it until they bypass the town,” added Mr Culbert.