Protest against fences along Grand Canal to be held this week

A protest against the fences along Grand Canal is to be held on Thursday July 18 at the Portobello Plaza at 7pm.

The barriers were erected along the Grand Canal in May, as 100 asylum seekers were removed from the site.

As of early July, the cost of removing tents has cost over €125,000, with the barriers alone costing €45,000 since May.

Waterways Ireland has said that to date, 330 tents have been removed from the site.

A protest fronted by CATU's (Community Action and Tenant's Union) Rialto-Liberties branch as well as People Before Profit among other organisers has been announced for this Thursday.

Sharing the protest on social media, PBP's Dublin Bay South criticised Waterways Ireland saying: "Waterways Ireland has no right taking a public space away from the public.

"It has no right destroying our canal with anti-homeless, hostile architecture".

The post continued saying: "It has no right to treating people like animals, destroying what little possessions they have and displacing them with no where else to go.

"Waterways Ireland cannot be allowed to get away with this".

Meanwhile, CATU said: "By fencing off our Grand Canal and evicting our homeless neighbours, the government have added insult to the injury of their failure to house those in need".

 

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A post shared by CATU Liberties-Rialto (@catuliberties)

This is not the first time the state body has come under fire, as Waterways Ireland and an employee are currently facing a criminal case after a man was paralysed when his tent cleared from Grand Canal in 2020.

The victim, Elias Adane, who is in his 30s and originally from Eritrea, sustained life-changing injuries in the incident, which happened on January 14 2020 on a stretch of the canal where homeless people had pitched tents and been served eviction notices.

The first charge served to the organisation “people were not exposed to risks to their safety, health or welfare” or that “there was an adequate system of work in place in respect of lifting a tent by means of a mechanical grab which included ensuring that the tent was unoccupied prior to removal”. The second charge claims Mr Adane suffered personal injury due to those failures