lundyfastnetirishsea:

Full article from The Sunday Times here.

The Four Courts and the Rock of Cashel will fall silent; the doors of the National Gallery and the gates of St Stephen’s Green will be locked; soldiers will man the gates of Leinster House. Tuesday’s public-sector strike will bring state services to a halt, forcing schools, colleges and hospital wards to close as 200,000 public servants down tools.

Prisoners will face an extra two hours’ lock-up in their cells; garda speed cameras will be on a go-slow; and dole cheques will not be issued. Swine-flu vaccinations will cease, litter will build up on city streets, and thousands of hospital procedures will be cancelled as 12 public-sector unions protest over next month’s budget

• Gardai will not issue speeding fines, use personal laptops, or switch on personal mobile phones, which are widely used to stay in touch with regional and rural garda stations.
• Prison transport services will not operate, and courts will shut down apart from urgent family law or custody cases, High Court habeas corpus applications, or urgent Special Criminal Court proceedings.
• Nurses represented by the INO and Siptu and working at acute hospitals will withdraw from elective services. This will effectively close outpatient departments, hospital day wards, and administration and education departments. Palliative and intensive-care units, delivery wards and accident and emergency will be exempt from strike action.
• Many cultural sites will be off limits to visitors including museums, Newgrange, and the Battle of the Boyne centre at Oldbridge, Co Meath.
• St Stephen’s Green in Dublin will not be opened by staff from the Office of Public Works, and Dublin city council parks, such as Merrion Square, Herbert Park and St Anne’s Park in Raheny, will shut.
• The Phoenix Park will remain open, although its interpretive centre won’t. The six “side” gates to the park, normally closed from 11pm to 7am, will not be closed on Monday or Tuesday night.
• In Leinster House, neither the Oireachtas committees nor the Seanad will sit on Tuesday, and there will be reduced service in Leinster House restaurants and bars. Restaurant service will be restricted to self-serve tea and coffee machines.
• The usual Dail adjournment debate at 8.30pm has been cancelled, and the visitors’ gallery will be closed. Army personnel will man the Kildare Street and Merrion Square entrance gates in place of the usual Dail ushers.

And, of course, no school, which either means cans or study. I fear I will have no choice except for the latter.

No college! I have unrestricted free time when I can’t be in work or i the library during the week for the first time since the summer. I was thinking of going to the zoo but I presume it won’t be open (who will feed the sealions? Also, who feeds them on Christmas Day?)  so I might go to the cinema but there’s nothing I want to see really.

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