The anger was palpable at last weekend’s INO conference in Cavan as nurses from around the country took to the floor to speak out about the woeful state of the health service and to demand better conditions for themselves and their patients. As professionals working at the coalface of the health care service, nurses witness the effects of under-funding, bad management and creeping privatisation in terms of their own working conditions and the level of care they can provide to their patients every day. As the government pushes for privatisation of our health service with incentives for construction of private hospitals nurses witness the erosion of our public health services. Motions brought to the conference by union delegates highlighted the many concerns held by nurses. Motions addressing privatisation, pay, severe understaffing, inadequate support, lack of respect and censorship of nurses were all put to the floor
Read on for a report on the conference and an interview with an INO delegate...

Related Links:
Keep Our Hospitals Public Irish Nurses Organisation Mary Harney should resign - call from PB4P

Starting with the first Critical Mass of 2006, documented here by Noise Hacker with the usual high quality photography and running until Saturday's Mayday march in Belfast covered here by Ciarán Ó Brolcháin, Mayday in Ireland was spread from weekend to the next. The Dublin trade union march drew the by now standard criticisms on size and promotion and also was criticised for the decision to hold it in April for a change. The Sunday of the bank holiday saw an Anarchist Picnic and Anti-Authoritarian-Assembly in Dublin 's Phoenix park while the Monday saw the unmanageables picnic at the US Embassy.

Elsewhere, the annual call for the EuroMayDay was issued and the Indymedia.ie calendar saw events listed for Sligo and Cork. But much attention was focussed on the nation called America with the Indymedia Ireland newswire seeing reports from our LA correspondent on the massive protests in Los Angeles while regular contributor John Throne gave his report on the 400,000 in Chicago on May Day.

In February this year, a new community garden has opened in Phibsborough, on the banks of the Royal Canal. It started off with some trees and a herb garden, and is establishing itself as an alternative means of urban food production. This article is a reflection by one of the community gardeners on the reasons for the project.

Excerpt:

We have lost the ability to provide for our needs from our local areas, and this coupled with an avaricious consumerism means we import more and more goods, both necessary and unnecessary, increasing the destruction worldwide.

The only sensible way of life is a sustainable one, everything else is by definition, doomed to failure sooner or later. Our lifestyle is so far removed from an idea of sustainability that it has become an absurdity. It’s nigh on impossible to find Irish apples in Tesco in September

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The Media Centre at the Athens ESF is a bustling hive of activity enabling activists, professional media and anyone who wishes to communicate the ESF to a wider world to do so. So how does the Media Centre work? Everyone volunteers their experience and expertise to help get things off the ground and running smoothly. Two groups involved in setting up and running the support for the Media Centre are Hellug and AWMN. Each was approached a month before the forum to provide the hardware and internet access through their network.

So why did they get involved with the ESF?

'It's fun, it's what we do, we learn something and it's a challenge!' says Mick Flemm (not his real name!).'It's a huge challenge, we've had up to 120 laptops, the media centre computers connected onto a backup system we weren't sure would work!' Cirrus, who finshed his service in the Greek army just 3 months ago, describes how it's the biggest single project they've been involved with. When asked about problems all eyes go up to heaven with lots of gesticulating and pooh pooh sounds. 'Problems?' he asks, 'we found chaos! We had to cable the entire network and phone lines and only got access to the main server two days ago!' Mick Flemm adds ' we didn't know if the bandwidth and access points we set up would have enough capacity for everyone, if we had enough coverage. Now it's great, OTE has set up their network and we can now do video streaming which we weren't able to do before'.

Initial reports coming in from the ESF in Athens, courtesy of Indymedia Irelands own Paula Geraghty, include photo essays here, here and here; and a description of the media centre.

'Comely maidens dancing at the crossroads' was what started it. DeValera's dismissive comment regarding women's roles in his vision of a new Ireland. Misquoted, of course, the actual word he used was 'happy'. So there we were, a bunch of women activists with nothing to do on Mayday (No RTS, aaaahhh) but be happy.

What better place than at the crossroads beside Herbert Park and the US embassy, right in front of DeValera's monument. Throw in a bit of dancing, a picnic with free food for all, send out a few invites, and see what happens...