May 8th, 2019
Students across Ireland are planning to strike once more next month to demand stronger Government action to tackle climate change.
The strike is set to
take place on 24 May and will be a part of a Global
Climate Strike For Future.
Prominent Irish school
striker Saoi O’Connor announced times and locations for May 24 protests through
her Twitter account.
Events will be held in
counties Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick, Donegal, Meath, Clare and Kerry.
The announcement comes
on the heels of last weekend’s protests in both Dublin and Cork that called on the Irish
government to demand a national declaration of a climate emergency – a key demand
of both Extinction Rebellion and the school strikes movement.
Climate emergencies
were announced by Scotland, Wales, and Westminster last month and Wicklow
became the first Irish county to declare a climate and biodiversity emergency at the end
of April.
O’Connor, who continues to hold weekly school strikes in front of Cork City Hall, told The Green News that she feels like the movement is being heard but has yet to be listened to as “we’re not seeing the action.”
The 24 May strike is
the second of its kind, following the global School Strike for Climate
Action on 15 March. Internationally, over 1,700 strikes took place
in some 112 countries the same day.
Starting at St
Stephen’s Green and making its way down to Leinster House, the 15 March action
saw around 15,000 students call on the Government to adopt effective climate
legislation.
The student climate
strike movement began in August 2018 when Swedish climate activist and student
Greta Thunberg began protesting on the steps of her parliament.
The Taoiseach Leo
Varadkar welcomed the participation of Irish students in the international school climate strike in March, acknowledging
that, “these are young people who are standing up to adults.”
Activists from Cork’s
Extinction Rebellion branch held
a climate vigil outside the Clayton Hotel last
week while the Taoiseach attended a town hall meeting.
Protesters stood in
silence outside the hotel with placards and banners to demonstrate their
dissatisfaction with the State’s lack of climate action.
For the second
consecutive year, Ireland has been singled out as the worst performing country
in Europe for addressing climate change.
Additionally, the
country remains way off track to meet its 2020 and 2030 climate targets
according to the latest EPA data.
Earlier this week, a landmark UN global assessment found that one million animal and plant species are now threatened with extinction and declining at rates unprecedented in human history.
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